' ~OPY 
I8b9. 




* MAY 2 6 1899 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelf.2Ak<3 33 
"H3S"Ufc> 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 

AND 

OTHER SERMONS 



AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 



AND 



OTHER SERMONS 



V 



BY 



J. B. HAWTHORNE, D. D. 
H 

WITH INTRODUCTION 

BY 
EDGAR ESTES FOLK, D. D. 



(^-^-^> 



PHILADELPHIA 

AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 

1420 Chestnut Street 

L 



3\<* 333 



31697 



Copyright 1899 by 
American Baptist Publication Society 



■, EC 







4 



jfrom tbe Society's own press 






CONTENTS 

SERMON PAGE 

Introduction 7 

I. An Unshaken Trust 19 

II. Ebenezer 36 

III. God's Appreciation of Humble Service . . 47 

IV. The Church Built on Peter 57 

V. Final Reward 73 

VI. True Friendship and its Counterfeits : . 85 

VII. Our Social Problems 99 

VIII. Paul's Reprobation of Idleness .... Ill 

IX. Receiving Divine Blessings 123 

X. Ingersoll and his Infidelity 136 

XI. What is Sin? 152 

XII. Lessons From a Converted Harlot . . . 164 

XIII. The Star of Bethlehem 176 

XIV. The Greatness of John the Baptist . . . 189 
XV. Judas, the Traitor 207 

XVI. The Old and the New in Religion . . . 222 

XVII. Christ's Accomplished Work 238 

5 



6 CONTENTS 

SERMON PAGE 

XVIII. Instability of Character 253 

XIX. The Two Marys at the Sepulchre . . . 266 
XX. Power of a Despised Doctrine ..... 281 

XXI. Spiritual Freedom. . . .294 

XXII. Deliverance from Evil 304 



INTRODUCTION 



Dr. J. B. Hawthorne, the author of the fol- 
lowing sermons, stands easily as the prince of South- 
ern Baptist preachers ; and if I should leave off 
the qualifying word Baptist, and even the word 
Southern, I should not perhaps miss the mark very 
far. At the meeting of the Baptist Young People's 
Union of America in Chattanooga, in July, 1897, 
Dr. Hawthorne preached what was called the Con- 
vention sermon. It was in his best style. A 
brother from the North afterward remarked to a 
Southerner : " I didn't know you had anybody 
down here who could preach like that." "Oh," 
replied the Southerner, " we have plenty of them." 
But I rather doubt it, though admiring the loyal 
pride of the Southerner. 

Dr. Hawthorne comes by his eloquence honestly. 
His father, Rev. Kedar Hawthorne, was a sturdy 
pioneer Baptist preacher of Alabama. As the re- 
sult of his labors he baptized more people than any 
minister who ever lived in Alabama — between five 
and six thousand. A prosperous planter, he preached 
at first without salary. He was a constituent mem- 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

ber of the Southern Baptist Convention. The son 
entered the ministry at about twenty-two years of 
age. He had received a liberal education for those 
days, at the Military Academy, Camden, Ala., and 
at Howard College, where he took both a literary 
and a theological course. 

His eloquence early attracted attention, and pulpits 
all over the land were open to him. He filled succes- 
sively the pulpits of the Broad Street Baptist Church, 
Mobile, Ala. ; the First Baptist Church, Selma, Ala. ; 
Franklin Square Baptist Church, Baltimore, Md. ; 
Broadway Baptist Church, Louisville, Ky. (of which 
he was the first pastor, and whose beautiful house of 
worship was erected under his ministry) ; Taberna- 
cle Baptist Church, New York City ; the First Bap- 
tist Church, Montgomery, Ala. ; the First Baptist 
Church, Richmond, Va. ; the First Baptist Church, 
Atlanta, Ga. ; and the First Baptist Church, Nash- 
ville, Tenn., where he is now, and where I trust he 
will long remain. All of these pulpits he filled with 
distinguished ability, large congregations attending 
upon his ministry. The members of the various 
churches grew in numbers and in all Christian 
graces. His last three pastorates — in Richmond, 
Atlanta, and Nashville — have been notably success- 
ful. His audiences at the First Baptist Church, 
Nashville, are only limited by the capacity of the 
building. 



INTRODUCTION 9 

Dr. Hawthorne is a natural orator. In person 
he is six feet four inches in height, with a massive 
frame, which gives him a commanding presence, and 
secures attention before he utters a word. He is a 
very Apollo in appearance, as well as an Apollos in 
eloquence. His face is smooth shaven, mobile, and 
expressive. His features are classic, not unlike those 
of Edwin Booth. In repose they are strong and 
manly. In the heat of speech they are capable of 
expressing every emotion, from a smile of sympathy 
to a storm of passion. His voice is round and full, 
highly cultivated, well modulated, and always under 
perfect control. In fact, with him, as it was with 
Spurgeon, his voice forms no small element in his 
success as an orator. His enunciation is clear and 
distinct, so that each word can be easily heard by 
every one in the audience. His manner at first is 
slow and deliberate. He moves off with the calm 
dignity of an ocean steamer, or of an avalanche 
just loosed from its moorings. But as he warms up 
to his subject he becomes like the steamer in mid- 
ocean, proudly plowing the mighty waters, or like 
the avalanche as it rushes onward and sweeps all 
before it. He reminds one in his manner, not of 
the foaming, dashing mountain torrent, but rather 
of the broad, majestic river. 

.His mental characteristics correspond with his 
physical. He is a strong, clear thinker. He is 



10 INTRODUCTION 

more the rhetorician than the logician, more the 
poet than the historian, more the orator than the 
debater. But he is by no means lacking in the 
qualities of the logician, the historian, and the de- 
bater. He knows what he wants to say and he 
says it — says it beautifully, says it grandly, but he 
says it, and says it so that every one understands 
what he meant to say. In the preparation of his 
sermons he is most painstaking, spending hours and 
often days upon them. Most of them are written 
in full, but many of them are either extemporaneous 
or only partially written. He is fortunate in hav- 
ing his son, Mr. C. W. Hawthorne, as his stenog- 
rapher. To him he dictates his written sermons 
after careful study upon them. They are taken 
down on the typewriter in large letters. Dr. Haw- 
thorne then goes over the sermon, underscores a 
catch word or two in each sentence, and takes the 
manuscript to the pulpit with him, but he has so 
familiarized himself with the sermon that he makes 
but little reference to the manuscript, and the lis- 
tener is scarcely aware that he has it before him at 
all. His style is smooth, elevated, dignified, never 
low or vulgar. He seldom makes attempts at wit, 
or tries to play upon the emotions. But not infre- 
quently smiles light up the countenances of his 
audience and tears steal down their cheeks. He 
abounds in illustrations, but they are always of a 



INTRODUCTION 1 1 

high order, often either scriptural or historical. He 
is more of a topical than a textual preacher, dis- 
cussing great themes rather than specific texts. 

But while nature has done much for Dr. Haw- 
thorne, grace has done more. His sermons are not 
simply cold, beautiful, intellectual compositions. 
They come from his heart as well as from his head. 
He is more of a preacher to the head than to the 
heart, perhaps, but he reaches the heart also — 
reaches the heart through the head. In all that he 
says there is an atmosphere of spirituality, a tone 
of devotion. Back of the beautiful sentences ut- 
tered in so eloquent a manner you feel the throb- 
bing brain and the pulsing heart of a man, drawing 
you into close sympathy with him. It is said that 
when people heard JEschines they would go away 
saying, " Isn't he a splendid orator?" When they 
heard Demosthenes they would exclaim, with clenched 
fists and flashing eyes, " Let us fight Philip." Dr. 
Hawthorne, in these respects, is a combination of 
both iEschines and Demosthenes as an orator. 
People admire him and at the same time they are 
moved to want to be and do better. Dr. Broadus 
says that " Eloquence is so speaking as not merely 
to convince the judgment, kindle the imagination, 
and move the feelings, but to give a powerful im- 
pulse to the will." Dr. Hawthorne has all these 
elements of true oratory, including the last. 



12 INTRODUCTION 

The writer remembers very vividly an experience 
of his own which illustrates this point. It was at 
the meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, 
at Montgomery, Ala., in 1886. Dr. Hawthorne 
preached the Convention sermon. His text was : 
" Where is the Lord God of Elijah ? " The sermon 
was a plea for courage and boldness in dealing with 
the foes of the Living God all about us now. At 
its conclusion he asked : " Who will be an Elijah 
to stand against the foes of God?" The young 
preacher sitting on the front seat and listening in- 
tently to every word of the sermon, was wrought 
up to the point of enthusiasm, and it was all he 
could do to keep from jumping up on the seat and 
exclaiming, "I will, doctor, I will." This experi- 
ence is probably only one of many others of a sim- 
ilar nature which might be related by those who 
have sat under the ministry of Dr. Hawthorne. 

A large part of Dr. Hawthorne's power consists 
in his intense earnestness. He evidently feels every 
word he says, and he wants you to feel its impor- 
tance also. He does not speak simply to please, but 
to move, to help. He has a practical aim in it all, 
which he keeps, and makes you keep, constantly in 
view. He drives continually to that end. He is 
of a very positive nature. He always takes his 
stand on one side or the other of any question. And 
he goes all the way, whichever way he goes. He 



INTRODUCTION 13 

has convictions, and he is absolutely fearless in ex- 
pressing them. He may not always be right, but 
he is always positive. His disposition is of the 
combative order. His " hot Southern blood," as he 
calls it, makes him somewhat impulsive. He is 
never so much at home as when attacking some- 
thing, especially the evils of the day, and above all 
the liquor traffic, which is his pet abomination. 
When denouncing these evils his sarcasm is most 
biting, his invectives withering. At such times, as 
some one said of Daniel Webster, " each word 
weighs a ton." His sentences crack like a whip 
and cut like a knife. He seems the spirit of elo- 
quence incarnate, the genius of oratory in the midst 
of a battle, where thought is powder, words are 
bullets, and he himself is the heavy artillery, vol- 
leying and thundering against the foe. At other 
times, when there is no special battle against sin 
raging, he is as smooth as a river, but always inter- 
esting, always helpful, always elegant and eloquent. 
Many of his sentences are polished until they shine 
with resplendent beauty, but the beauty is that of 
the mountain rather than of the flower, a lofty 
grandeur rather than an insipid prettiness. He is 
an orator ; but he is pre-eminently a pulpit orator, 
discussing noble themes in a manner befitting their 
dignity. He believes thoroughly in those grand 
old Baptist principles which have come down to us 



14 INTRODUCTION 

from Christ and his apostles, often through fire and 
through blood, and which he has loved to preach 
for so many years. But in his advocacy of them 
he never forgets that he is a Christian gentleman. 
He puts Christ before the church, the blood before 
the water always. He prefers the spirit of Chris- 
tianity to its form, the substance to the shadow. 
Rites and ceremonies he abominates, and hypocrit- 
ical pretensions his soul abhors. 

His private character is of the purest and loftiest 
type. He loves virtue, loathes vice ; admires hon- 
esty, and despises meanness or trickery. It is this 
high character which gives him to a large extent his 
popularity both as a man and as a preacher, and 
which adds weight and dignity to his utterances. 
He is oftentimes regarded as cold and haughty, 
holding his brethren at arm's length from him. 
People at first are disposed to stand somewhat in 
awe of him. But never was there a greater mis- 
take made about a man. He is as simple and un- 
affected as a child, easily approachable by any one, 
companionable in the highest degree, warm-hearted, 
loving, and lovable, with a sincerity and trans- 
parency about his character which make it very, 
beautiful. I do not know any one who has received 
as much praise that is as completely unspoiled by it, 
and as apparently unconscious of it. Through it 
all he is the same simple, genial Christian, the same 



INTKODUCTION 15 

noble, manly man, brave as a lion, but tender as a 
woman and generous to a fault. It is this individ- 
uality, this strong personality, this manliness of 
character, that constitutes one of the chief sources 
of his power. For after all, our sermons are simply 
the reflection of our characters, the projection of 
ourselves into the pulpit. He is a man among 
men. But his manhood is subdued, refined, enno- 
bled, guided, dominated by the principles of Christ. 
To him to live is Christ. Christ lives in him, and 
the life he now lives is the Christ life. When he 
speaks he speaks for Christ, and Christ speaks 
through him. 

Preaching is hard work, the hardest work in the 
world. It brings into play every part of a person, 
physical, mental, and spiritual. The half-hour 
during which he stands before the people to preach 
puts a tremendous strain upon the preacher, a draft 
upon all his forces. It is a supreme test of the 
man. But while hard it is glorious business when 
it is glorious, though most inglorious w T hen it is in- 
glorious. The privilege of being an ambassador 
for Christ, of standing before men and beseeching 
them in Christ's stead to be reconciled to God, is 
one which angels might well covet. What preacher 
worthy of the name is there who does not "love to 
tell the story of Jesus and his love," whose soul 
does not thrill with rapture as he repeats the mes- 



16 INTRODUCTION 

sage entrusted to him ? Oh, the joy of that hour ! 
What joy can compare with it ? There is no hap- 
piness on earth to equal it, and I doubt if there 
will be any in heaven superior to it. And then 
when he who delivers the message is one who has 
sat often at the Saviour's feet and dwelt in his in- 
ner chambers and learned his holiest secrets, who 
has looked into the King's face, who is himself a 
master of assemblies, and can sway people with his 
words as the grain is swayed in the breeze, what 
sacred bliss, what infinite joy ! Such is the experi- 
ence of Dr. Hawthorne. 

Dr. Hawthorne has a lecture on the subject of 
" The World's Great Orators," which he recently 
delivered in his own pulpit on a week night to an 
audience which filled the large house, despite the 
fact that an admission fee was charged. Of course 
he did not include himself in the list of the world's 
great orators. But he might have done so. For 
among them all there have been few who have com- 
bined more of the graces and beauties and at the 
same time the triumphs of true oratory than are 
combined in him. 

He is now sixty-one years of age. But despite 
some recent ailments resulting from malaria and 
grip, his general health is good. His constitution 
is strong and robust. For one who has done the 
work he has he is a well-preserved man. The gray 



INTRODUCTION 17 

hairs are just beginning to show plainly in his long, 
black, glossy locks. He ought to have ten or even 
twenty years more of good solid work for the Mas- 
ter in him. I trust he may be spared to accom- 
plish it. But it can be only a few years at most that 
he shall be with us. When he falls it will be like 
the falling of a giant oak in the midst of the forest, 
like the falling of some bright particular star from 
the heavens. Those of us who are living will hardly 
look upon his like again. He seems 

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm ; 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head. 

John of Antioch was called Chrysostom, " the 
golden-mouthed"; Bossuet, "the eagle of elo- 
quence " ; Edward Everett, " the silver-tongued 
orator." All of these expressions might be applied 
to Dr. Hawthorne. It seems to me, though, that 
there is one adjective which peculiarly fits him — 
magnificent. Magnificent in appearance, magnifi- 
cent in diction, magnificent in character, magnificent 
as a man, magnificent as a preacher — " Hawthorne 
the Magnificent," so let it be. 

The following sermons, after being preached in 
his own pulpit, were published in the " Baptist and 
Reflector," where they were read with the greatest 



18 INTRODUCTION 

delight and profit by a large circle of readers. 
Among them, it should be stated, are some of the 
best sermons of his life, which he has been especially 
requested to put in permanent form. The published 
sermons lack much in losing the commanding pres- 
ence of the author, the force of his personality, the 
fire of his flashing eyes, the modulation of his voice, 
all of which go far toward impressing them upon 
his audience. But still one finds in them his elo- 
quent diction, his elevated thought, his classic illus- 
trations, and breathing through all his earnest pur- 
pose and his noble spirit, which make even the 
written sermons exceedingly interesting and helpful. 
That those published in this volume may prove 
such to the reader, leading him to a higher, better, 
truer, more consecrated Christian life, I most earn- 
estly join my prayers with those of the distinguished 
author. 

Edgar Estes Folk. 
Nashville, Tenn. 



1 

AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 



"Let come on me what will. . . Though he slay me, yet 
will I trust in him. ,, Job 13 : 13, 15. 

God delights to honor a true man. He takes 
pleasure in placing him where the world may see the 
excellence of his character and feel the power of his 
life. But before he sets him in a regal place and 
encircles his brow with a crown of glory, he suffers 
him to be tried. He subjects him to a baptism of 
fire. He lets the world and Satan smite him with 
manifold afflictions. In this way he prepared such 
men as Chrysostom, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Carey, 
and Judson for their exalted stations and work. 
Having suffered with Christ, they now reign with 
him over the hearts and lives of men. 

God saw in his servant Job a man in whom he 
was well pleased. " Hast thou considered my serv- 
ant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a 
perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God 
and escheweth evil ? " Such integrity must not be 
permitted to dwell in obscurity. It must be exalted 

19 



20 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 

and made visible to men of every land and age. 
But as a preparation for such exaltation, Job must 
pass through great tribulation. 

What God loves the devil hates. What God de- 
lights to honor the devil loves to defame. When 
God said, " Hast thou considered my servant Job, a 
perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God 
and escheweth evil," the devil answered, " Doth 
Job fear God for nought ? Hast thou not made a 
hedge about him, and about his house, and about all 
that he hath on every side ? Thou hast blessed the 
work of his hands, and his substance is increased in 
the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch 
all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face." 
By this Satan means that Job is a hypocrite, that 
selfishness is behind all his piety and fealty to God, 
and that if deprived of his temporal prosperity he 
would be utterly wicked and faithless. 

The devil to-day is just what he has ever been. 
The same sneer is on his face and the same venom 
is on his lips. Where is the man in this city, in 
this country, or in the wide world, who fears God 
and eschews evil in the midst of a crooked and per- 
verse generation, against whom some emissary of 
Satan has not brought the charge of insincerity and 
hypocrisy ? How often we hear the remark, " Such 
a man belongs to the church because it helps him in 
his temporal affairs. He gets the patronage of the 



AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 21 

church in his business. But let misfortune come 
upon him, let him lose his custom, and let his busi- 
ness go down, and he will make shipwreck of his 
faith." Who has not heard the mean indictment 
that ministers of the gospel are mere hirelings, that 
they are preaching for pay, that they are making 
merchandise of religion, that they have no faith in 
what they preach, that they care nothing for the 
souls of men, and that if their emoluments were 
taken from them they would desert their flocks, go 
over to the ranks of infidelity, and curse the Christ 
whose gospel they have preached ? 

If the men who make these charges are sincere, 
they not only repudiate Christianity, but pronounce 
themselves utterly faithless toward men. They be- 
lieve that man is too selfish to be able to approxi- 
mate an act of disinterested goodness. They believe 
that all his conduct toward God and his fellow-men 
is inspired solely by the desire and purpose to advance 
his own earthly interests. 

Just that is what the devil professes to believe, 
and you know what the devil is. He has neither 
pity nor respect for man. He is man's enemy. His 
work is to degrade and damn him. Men who have 
no confidence in their fellows have none in them- 
selves. Believing the whole human race to be en- 
tirely selfish, all their transactions are inspired solely 
by the love of self. They use their fellow-men only 



22 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 

as instruments to accomplish their selfish ends. If 
it is to their interest to applaud a man they bind the 
laurel on his brow, but if they can put money in 
their purse or elevate themselves to political office 
by detraction and slander, there is nothing in their 
depraved hearts to restrain them. 

No man is better than his faith. He who has 
faith in mankind, he who sees among the ruins of 
the fall traces of a primeval glory which through 
God's infinite grace may be recovered, he who be- 
lieves that there is human pity that is real, and hu- 
man love that is pure, he who believes that there is 
a Godward side to man's being which is capable of 
real fellowship with the true and good, is man's 
friend. But he who believes that the central and 
ruling principle of every human heart is the love 
of self and that human aspiration can rise to nothing 
higher and nobler than the gratification of self, is 
man's enemy. Like Satan, conscious of his own 
depravity and vileness, he would drag earth and 
heaven down to a level with himself. 

How miserable must such a man be ! In all the 
broad world of humanity he sees nothing that is 
worthy to be loved and honored, and nothing in 
which he is willing to confide and look for sympathy 
and support in the day of trouble. Satan said he 
was going to and fro in the earth and walking up 
and down in it. He is the most miserable being in 



AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 23 

the universe because he loves nothing and confides 
in nothing. Peace has forsaken the breast of that 
man who believes that the regnant principle of every 
human heart is unmitigated selfishness. Such a be- 
lief unfits him for the enjoyment of any blessing. 
He looks upon every man as his enemy. He re- 
gards all human conduct as deceptive and every 
offer of kindness as the forerunner of a base be- 
trayal. Regarding himself as a devil incarnate in a 
world of devils, he walks up and down the earth, 
hoping to find some grains of comfort in reviling 
and cursing his fellow-men. His years are all win- 
ter, his world all hollow and false, and his universe 
all gloomy and ghastly. 

Young men, the days are evil. The moral atmos- 
phere which you breathe is laden with poison. All 
around you are men whose material prosperity de- 
pends upon your degradation. Just to the extent 
that they corrupt your minds and lives they add to 
their ill-gotten gains. These men would tell you 
that man is incurably selfish, and therefore incapable 
of disinterested goodness. They would tell you that 
those Christian temples are only monuments to the 
hollowness and hypocrisy of the men who built 
them. They would tell you that religion is only a 
cloak, under which men seeking their own aggran- 
dizement conceal the iniquity of their hearts. They 
would tell you that even the men who have been 



24 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 

leaders of our sacramental hosts, and whom the 
world has loved and honored for their Christian 
virtues, were deceivers of mankind and went down 
to their graves with a lie on their lips. 

They would teach you to despise the faith of the 
Christian mother who nurtured your childhood and 
to despise the counsels of the Christian father who 
breathed upon you his dying benediction. They 
would persuade you to forsake the Christian sanctu- 
ary and spend your Sabbaths in club rooms. They 
would tell you that IngersolPs tracts are better than 
the Bible, and the lascivious songs of the beer saloon 
sweeter than the songs of Zion. They would entreat 
you to hate and cry down every man who would put 
restraints upon unholy lust or who w T ould insist 
upon honesty in business and fair dealing at the 
ballot box. 

These are the men who set themselves up as your 
teachers, and who would give direction to your 
lives. Will you accept such a leadership ? Will you 
allow them to destroy your reverence for all things 
sacred ? Will you suffer them to pluck from your 
hearts the faith that was planted there by a mother's 
love, and the lessons of honor and rectitude received 
from a father's lips ? Will you exchange the cup 
of the Lord for the cup of devils ? Will you for- 
sake Christ for Belial? If not, then join in holy 
alliance with those who are fighting the worst ad- 



AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 25 

versaries of God's truth and man's welfare, and help 
to generate a moral atmosphere in which this upas 
tree of infidelity, blasphemy, and dishonesty cannot 
live. 

Are there any honest men in the w T orld ? The 
devil says there are none. Among the millions of 
men and women who wear the Christian regalia and 
follow the crimson banner of the cross, are there any 
who love truth and righteousness more than them- 
selves, and whose allegiance to God's cause cannot be 
shaken by any tempest of adversity? The devil 
says there are none. He is a liar, and the truth is 
not in him. His indictment is a libel as black as 
the starless night to which eternal justice has con- 
signed him. 

I am not blind to the world's depravity. I rec- 
ognize the fact that among the millions who claim 
to be believers and followers of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, there are many whose hearts and lives are 
stained with the deepest hypocrisy. But virtue has 
not forsaken the world ; honesty, honor, and patriot- 
ism still live. In the marts of trade there are 
thousands of men whose moral integrity has with- 
stood every temptation to wrong dealing. The as- 
sumption of certain political henchmen that every 
American voter has his price is absolutely false. 
That there is a large element of our population who 
have no appreciation of the dignity and responsi- 



26 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 

bility of citizenship, I do not deny. That vast 
sums of money have been raised to corrupt the bal- 
lot, and that thousands of ignorant and impecunious 
wretches have bartered their birthright, I am com- 
pelled to admit. But patriotism lives; and I be- 
lieve will live forever in the hearts of the American 
people. The majority of the property holders of 
this country in the last Federal election voted for 
what they believed to be for the welfare of the 
whole country. And there are millions of the 
horny-handed sons of toil in our workshops and fac- 
tories, on our farms and in our mines, who would 
resent as an unpardonable insult to their manhood 
any attempt to purchase their ballot or to intimidate 
them in the exercise of their constitutional right to 
vote according to their honest convictions. 

Unselfish devotion to Christ's kingdom is one of 
the most manifest realities of this world. The 
pages of history are luminous with the names of 
men who were loyal to God in the midst of affluence 
and luxury, and who were equally loyal in the 
depths of poverty. 

I have gone to the almshouses of this country 
and found men who were once merchant princes. 
They were Christians in the heyday of their tem- 
poral prosperity, but still better Christians in the 
dark day of adversity. All such facts demonstrate 
that man is capable of disinterested fealty to God 7 



AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 27 

and that when he plants himself by faith on the 
foundation of God's eternal truth, not even the 
gates of hell can prevail against him. 

In the sacred narrative before us Satan declares 
that selfishness is at the bottom of Job's upright- 
ness and piety, and that if Job's material posses- 
sions were taken from him he would not only forsake 
religion, but curse the Holy Being whom he had 
worshiped and served. God accepts the challenge 
and suffers the test to be made. All that Job has 
of temporal treasure is placed within the power of 
Satan. From what follows we may judge what 
would become of the possessions of any God-fear- 
ing and upright man, if Satan were allowed abso- 
lute control of them. If it were proclaimed to-day 
by the civil authorities of this country that for the 
next week all laws against vice and crime would be 
annulled, and that all evil-doers should, within that 
period, be absolutely free to do whatever their 
malign passions should prompt them to do, what a 
reign of terror would ensue. Scarcely a Christian 
home would escape the torch. Stores would be 
rifled, banks robbed, and factories and churches de- 
molished. 

That such results would follow the removal of all 
restraints from evil-minded men we can readily be- 
lieve when we see how the upright man in the land 
of Uz fares in the hands of Satan. At a time when 



28 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 

he had no thought of evil, and imagined himself 
secure beneath the protecting arm of Him whom he 
had served so faithfully, there came a messenger 
and said : " The oxen were plowing and the asses 
feeding beside them, and the Sabeans fell upon them 
and took them away ; yea, they have slain thy serv- 
ants with the edge of the sword, and I only am 
escaped alone to tell thee." 

Hardly had this messenger finished his sad story 
before there came another, who said : " The fire of 
God is fallen from heaven and hath burned up the 
sheep and the servants, and consumed them, and I 
only am escaped alone to tell thee." 

While he was yet speaking there came another 
messenger, who said : " The Chaldeans made out 
three bands and fell upon the camels, and have car- 
ried them away, yea, and slain the servants with 
the edge of the sword, and I only am escaped alone 
to tell thee." 

What next ? Before this man had uttered the 
last word of his fearful message there came another, 
who said : " Thy sons and thy daughters were eating 
and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house ; 
and behold, there came a great wind from the wil- 
derness, and smote the four corners of the house, 
and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead, 
and I only am escaped alone to tell thee." 

Terrible agents were these in the hands of the 



AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 29 

arch-demon. Sabeans, Chaldeans, whirlwind, and 
fire combined their fury against one defenseless 
man. 

What is the result upon Job's mind, upon Job's 
faith and integrity ? Sheep and camels all stolen, 
servants burned to ashes, the bodies of his children 
mangled and dead beneath the ruins of a dwelling. 
Surely, if it be possible for temporal calamity to 
make a godly man faithless, Job will now fulfill the 
prophecy of Satan, renounce his religion, and curse 
the God whom he had worshiped. 

But how does this servant of the Most High de- 
port himself as he contemplates the wreck of his 
earthly fortune and hopes ? Does he fall out with 
religion and proclaim it a vain thing to serve God ? 
Nay. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God 
foolishly, but fell to the ground and worshiped him, 
saying : " The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken 
away ; blessed be the name of the Lord." 

What is the significance of this story ? It is 
God Almighty's refutation of a lie. Satan says man 
worships his maker only for temporal advantage. 
God answers, " It is false," and proves it by the 
conduct of his servant Job. 

From the birth of true religion to this hour, 
Satan, speaking through human lips, has charged 
that men who worship God are inspired with no 
higher motive than the desire of temporal aggran- 



30 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 

dizement; and though the contradiction has been 
made by millions of holy men who preserved their 
moral and religious integrity in the depths of pov- 
erty, amid the gloom of the dungeon and the flames 
of the stake, the lie still lives and men still repeat 
it with all the malignity and venom of their Satanic 
master. 

As the old patriarch Job stood upright and un- 
swerving amid the desolation that surrounded him, 
God said : " Still he holdeth fast his integrity, al- 
though thou movedst me against him to destroy 
him without cause." 

The Lord God is proud of the triumphs of his 
people, and when the registering angel records a 
victory for the least of his flock banners wave from 
all the hills of heaven and the enraptured millions 
of the blest tune their harps anew and rise to higher 
notes of praise. 

Satan, discomfited in his first attempt to over- 
throw this righteous man, proposes to renew the 
attack and challenges the Almighty to subject Job 
to another test : " Put forth thine hand now, and 
touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee 
to thy face." 

God knows his people. He knows that neither 
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, 
nor any other creature, can separate them from him. 



AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 31 

He is not afraid that they will forsake him in the 
hour of their darkness and distress. Having this 
confidence in their loyalty, he accepts this new chal- 
lenge. " So Satan went forth from the presence of 
the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the 
sole of his foot unto his crown." 

Poor Job ! Behold him, pity him. Covered 
with disease the most foul and loathsome, his flesh 
rotting and falling from the bones, stinking w T ith 
corruption, he sits down in ashes and scrapes him- 
self with a potsherd. Conscious of his integrity, 
knowing that he had done nothing to merit such 
suffering, doubtless his breast was the arena of bit- 
ter conflicts and the temptation to renounce God 
came upon him with tremendous power. 

But to add to the severity of his trial, the devil 
enters into the wife of the patriarch. So loathsome 
has he become, so sickening and horrid the stench 
of his running sores, that she, the partner of his life, 
the wife of his bosom, and the mother of his children, 
is constrained to forsake him. Sick, disgusted, and 
horrified, she turns away from him with the ex- 
hortation to curse God and die. But under the 
pressure of all this suffering, desolate, forsaken, an 
object of loathing even to the wife who up to this 
hour had been loyal and faithful, Job did not sin. 
The loss of property, the loss of servants, the loss of 
children, the loss of health, the loss of all human 



32 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 

affection and sympathy, presented a mighty tempta- 
tion, and yet he serenely faced it and conquered it. 

Still another trial awaits him. Worse than pov- 
erty, worse than disease, worse than the death of 
children, and worse than the desertion by one's own 
flesh, is the loss of one's good name. As Job was 
a great sufferer, men looked upon him as a great 
sinner. They regarded his calamities as only the 
just and inevitable penalty for some villainous trans- 
gression which he had sought to hide beneath the 
covering of a religious profession. 

The pangs of dying are sweet in comparison with 
the anguish which an upright man feels in being 
subjected to a base-born suspicion which he is pow- 
erless to remove. And yet, when God laid this 
burden upon the heart of Job, his faith did not fail 
him. Loving and serving the Lord for the Lord's 
sake, cleaving to the truth because it was truth, and 
holding on to the right because it was right, he 
said : " Let come what will, . . . Though he slay 
me, yet will I trust in him." 

When men stand up before the world and declare 
that the Christian's faith is unreal and that his 
Christian labors and self-denials are inspired only 
by the hope of temporal advantage I almost wonder 
that the sheeted dead do not rise from their graves 
and rebuke them. 

Was it for temporal gain that Paul was obedient 



AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 33 

to the heavenly vision which called him into Mace- 
donia ? Was it for temporal gain that he submitted 
to five Jewish scourgings and three Roman flagella- 
tions ? Was it for temporal gain that he endured 
the prolonged insolence of provincial magistrates 
and the gnashing fury of frenzied mobs ? Was it 
for temporal gain that he wore for three years a 
felon's chain and slept in a felon's cell ? Was it 
for temporal gain that he suffered the loss of all 
things and at last expired at the hands of a Roman 
headsman? Was it for any earthly good that 
Francis Xavier carried the gospel into India ? 
Was it for any temporal reward that he suffered 
among the poor, degraded pearl fishers of the straits 
of Manaar ? Was it for any hope of earthly gain 
that he preached the gospel where earthquakes, 
pestilence, and savagery imperiled his life at every 
moment ? 

No ! No ! It would be flattery to call that man 
mean who would question the sincerity of such a 
life or attempt to cast a shadow upon such a name. 

In the present generation there are moral heroes 

who will not suffer by comparison with those whose 

names illumine the pages of history. Immediately 

around us are men and women who, amid conflicts 

dark and dire, hold to truth and virtue and God 

with a faith as unflinching and firm as that of the 

patriarch Job. Go with me to-morrow and I will 

c 



34 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 

conduct you into a chamber where lies the wasted 
and skeleton form of a man who for months and 
years has not had one hour's exemption from pain, 
and yet he is uncomplaining and peaceful. With 
the cold sweat of agony standing on his brow and 
his whole body quivering with anguish he is wont 
to say : " It is the Lord ; let him do what seemeth 
him good." 

Follow me again and I will lead you beneath a 
humble roof where the deepest and saddest poverty 
dwells, poverty unpitied because unknown to the 
world. There a frail woman, too noble to beg, 
plies her needle from morn till midnight that her 
fatherless children may not lack for bread to-morrow. 
No word of complaint drops from her lips ; but grate- 
ful to God for a little meal in the barrel and a rude 
shelter above her head, and looking forward to a 
heritage of peace and plenty beyond the stars, she 
exclaims : " What shall I render unto the Lord for 
all his benefits ? " " Bless the Lord, oh, my soul, 
and all that is within me bless his holy name ! " 

Go with me to yonder city of the dead. There 
beneath a weeping willow a mother kneels at the 
grave of her only child. Sorrow has plowed deep 
furrows on her face, but the light of hope is in her 
eye. As her tears fall and mingle with the dust 
we hear her say : " The Lord gave, the Lord hath 
taken away ; blessed be the name of the Lord." 



AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 35 

I dare say that in the secret solitude of hearts 
before me to-day there are wounds and aching griefs 
which only heaven can cure. There are some here 
whose cup is all bitterness, and yet day by day they 
look up to God and say : " Let come what will. . . 
Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Such 
men and women are the salt of the earth and the 
light of the world. They are witnesses for God 
and his truth whose testimony can never be refuted. 
May God multiply their seed and their triumphs 
until the last infidel voice is silenced and the last 
skeptic shall lift his eyes to the cross and exclaim, 
in the language of the Roman soldier : " Truly this 
was the Son of God." 



/ 



II 

EBENEZER 



" Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.'' 1 Sam. 7 : 12. 

The condition of the Hebrew commonwealth when 
Eli the priest died was very deplorable. The people 
were not only sadly ignorant, but had wandered far 
from virtue and God. Their country was often in- 
vaded by the armies of surrounding nations. Their 
most sacred treasure, the ark of the covenant, had 
been captured and carried away. They were op- 
pressed, broken in spirit, given to idolatry, and im- 
mersed in vice. Such was their condition when 
Samuel became their priest and judge. 

Commiserating their degraded and suffering con- 
dition, this good man called the people together, re- 
counted their sins, and revealed to them the will of 
God. He told them that if they would sincerely 
repent and put away their strange gods, the Lord 
would deliver them out of the hands of the Philis- 
tines. They hearkened to his voice, forsook the wor- 
ship of idols, and returned to the service of the true 
and living God. 

36 



EBENEZER 37 

While they were gathered together at Mizpeh, 
they drew water from the wells and poured it out 
upon the ground before the Lord, saying, " We have 
sinned against the Lord." This ceremony w r as a 
symbolic act by which they expressed their deep 
contrition for their apostasy. In this repentant 
state Samuel found it easy to settle all difficulties 
among them. Their quarrels and feuds were readily 
adjusted, and peace and harmony reigned throughout 
the camp. 

When the Philistines heard that they were gath- 
ered together at Mizpeh, they at once moved up in 
great numbers against them. The Israelites were 
alarmed, but Samuel soon quieted their fears. He 
took a sucking lamb, made a burnt offering of it, 
cried unto the Lord for help, and the Lord heard 
him. When the Philistines drew near, God spoke 
in a mighty roll of thunder from the heavens. 
Smitten with fear they fled. The Israelites pursued 
and smote them until they came to Beth-car. Then 
Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpeh and 
Shen, and called it Ebenezer, saying, " Hitherto 
hath the Lord helped us." 

This rude stone was a simple and inexpensive 
device, but no monument ever reared by human 
hands was more pleasing to God. 

That stone was put there in no boastful spirit. 
It was not a reminder of what they had done, but 



38 EBENEZER 

of what God had done for them. " Hitherto hath 
the Lord helped us." 

If troubles should come again, if another enemy 
should march against them, that little stony monu- 
ment would help them to remember what God had 
done for them in a season of great peril and inspire 
them to look to the same divine source for succor 
and deliverance. 

There are events in every man's life that are 
worthy of special recognition. There are signal 
interpositions of divine power which shield him 
from peril and save him from suffering. He owes 
it to God and to himself to commemorate such 
events. It is well for every one of us to keep in 
mind every special manifestation of God's guiding 
and preserving care. We should never begin a new 
year without raising an Ebenezer, to testify that 
hitherto the Lord has helped us. 

In the history of our households there are events 
which mark the genesis of new and potent influences 
for good or evil. Births, marriages, deaths, loss of 
property, sicknesses, escapes from imminent peril, 
are events which have a vital bearing on the char- 
acter and destinies of families. Every man among 
you can remember occurrences which deeply stirred 
his inner being and helped to strengthen his love of 
virtue, or helped to sink him to a lower level of 
moral life. These things he should never forget. 



EBENEZER 39 

The Christian should persistently cultivate the 
recollection of the beginnings of his spiritual life. 
Every day he should go back in thought to his first 
conviction of sin, his mourning over divine goodness 
and mercy rejected and despised, and his despair 
when it seemed to him that there was " no eye to 
pity and no arm to save." Every day he should 
recall the hour when God responded to his cry for 
help, when the darkness that shrouded his soul dis- 
appeared, when he saw the Lord God, merciful and 
gracious, bending over him, and heard his pitying 
voice, saying, "Thy sins, w r hich are many, are all 
forgiven thee." Every day he should review his 
spiritual life, and celebrate the occasions when God 
empowered him to overcome mighty temptations 
and "put to flight the armies of the aliens." Every 
day he should recall his seasons of spiritual exalta- 
tion and rapture. Every day he should sing : 

Through many dangers, toils, and cares, 

I have already come ; 
'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, 

And grace will take me home. 

Man's truest and deepest life is in the unseen 
realm of his spiritual being. No events in his 
history deserve such celebration as the victories 
which he wins on the battlefield of his own soul. 
In comparison with his triumphs over his own un- 



40 EBENEZER 

righteous thoughts and affections no outward achieve- 
ment is worthy of notice. 

When a man is elected to a great political office 
how promptly his friends come forward and shower 
congratulations upon him. Bonfires, illuminations, 
booming cannon, and vast processions are employed 
to celebrate his victory. 

If the newspapers should announce to-morrow 
that a rich uncle had died and left me a million 
dollars, or that by some bold financial adventure of 
my own I had become immensely rich, I imagine 
that my friends would be almost drunk with joy. 
But how few would congratulate me if it were known 
that I had triumphed over some mighty temptation 
to wrong-doing, and had risen to some higher level 
of moral and spiritual power. 

God's greatest gifts are bestowed upon the soul. 
While we should never despise external blessings, 
while we should not undervalue wealth, office, and 
distinction, we should remember that the things that 
are not seen are vastly better and more enduring 
than those which come within the range of our mor- 
tal vision. 

Man's first and strongest aspiration should be for 
imperial sway over his own inner being. To uproot 
some unholy affection, to extirpate some ignoble 
ambition, to triumph over some revengeful feeling, 
to crucify some lurking jealousy — these are achieve- 



EBENEZER 41 

ments which, in God's eye, eclipse the conquest of a 
nation. My brother, if you have won such victories 
raise your Ebenezer, and thus testify to the world 
that hitherto the Lord has helped you. 

We are constrained to confess that we are shame- 
fully forgetful of the favors which God's helping 
hand has bestowed upon us. We imagine that we 
are the architects of our own fortune. We seldom 
think of God as having anything to do with our suc- 
cesses in life. We are almost blind to the mani- 
festations of his guiding, protecting, and supporting 
presence. 

I have spent whole nights in gazing into heaven. 
The glory of God beaming from the silent stars 
would not let me sleep. I felt that it would be a 
sin to close my eyes beneath that magnificent display 
of Jehovah's wisdom, power, and goodness. What 
are man's inventions and creations, what are all the 
productions of human power and skill, compared 
to those frescoes of light and beauty which God has 
painted on the midnight sky ? But while day speaks 
to day, and night to night repeats the story of God's 
goodness and love to man, how feeble are the ex- 
hibitions of our appreciation of what he has done 
for us ! 

God keeps a record of the blessings with which 
he enriches our lives, and what is worthy of record 
in heaven is not unworthy of remembrance on earth. 



42 EBENEZER 

Let us make some external record of the special 
displays of God's love and mercy along our earthly 
pilgrimage. Let us set up some visible memorial 
somewhere that will serve to remind us and others 
of the great things the Lord has done for us. There 
are many ways in which this can be done. Every 
man's home should be a sort of museum, a place for 
the exhibition of souvenirs — things that will keep 
alive the memory of every year and month of the 
family history. 

I have a large collection of photographs in my 
home. They are the likenesses of persons connected 
with the churches and congregations which I have 
served. Sometimes my wife and I open the big box 
in which these things are preserved, take them out 
one by one and carefully study them. Each one of 
them revives a hundred blessed memories, and in 
going through the collection we pass through forty 
years of history. We have numerous pictures of 
our own children — pictures taken at intervals be- 
tween their infancy and the present. In looking at 
them, we go over the history of our two boys. As 
soon as our eyes fall upon one of them, we recall 
the place where it was taken and group around it a 
hundred events in that period of the child's life. 

There is one peculiarity of the Germans that has 
always pleased me. If a German is able to have a 
private art gallery, he builds it apart from his resi- 



EBENEZER 43 

dence. On the walls of his dwelling you see no 
landscape paintings, no pictures of animals, no por- 
traits of kings, warriors, philosophers, poets, and 
scientists. You see nothing there but the faces of 
those who belong to his own household, and of their 
ancestors for many generations. As he walks 
through his home and gazes upon those faces, a 
thousand blessed recollections are revived. 

I have sometimes found a Bible which the owner 
had converted into a record of his spiritual life. I 
can show you the Bible of a Christian mother that 
has two or three thousand passages marked, to de- 
note that they had been especially comforting and 
precious to her. 

The most sacred treasure preserved by my father's 
family is my mother's Bible. In all the world there 
is nothing that stirs my emotional nature more pro- 
foundly than a look into the well-worn pages of that 
dear old book, which was the light and solace and 
strength of my mother's life. 

Christian mother, set apart some copy of God's 
word to be known in the family as " mother's Bible," 
and when you read a passage of it which opens a 
fountain of comfort to your soul, mark it with your 
pencil or write something on the margin which in 
years to come will remind you, your children, and 
your children's children, how the Lord helped you 
as you meditated upon those sacred words. 



44 EBENEZER 

Nothing is more beautiful to me than a home 
filled with mementos — a home in which almost 
every object is a reminder of some special manifes- 
tation of God's loving-kindness and tender mercy. 
Blessed is the child that is reared in such a home. 
The sons and daughters who go out from it will be 
the truest witnesses for Christ and the brightest 
ornaments to society. 

Let us make our piety thoroughly practical. Let 
us transmute every religious sentiment into some- 
thing useful to the world. If you wish to com- 
memorate the goodness of God to you in answering 
your prayer for the recovery of your sick child, go 
out and bestow some substantial and lasting benefit 
upon the unfortunate child of some poor neighbor. 
Give crutches to some little cripple, or educate some 
widow's son or daughter, or send some young man, 
divinely called to the Christian ministry, to a theo- 
logical seminary, or build a chapel for one of our 
foreign missions. Such a token of your grateful 
remembrance of divine favors to you would be more 
pleasing to God than a monument of stone or brass. 

Let us begin this new year by looking back over 
the mercies of the years which preceded it, and by 
such a consecration of ourselves to the Lord's cause 
as will express our gratitude for his past favors. 

If in the year that has just fled sorrow shadowed 
your home, do not think of it as a year of calamity. 



EBENEZER 45 

We can never know the best things until we enter 
the shadows of sorrow. Remember that the Master 
said, "Blessed are they that mourn." There are 
blessings rich, deep, and satisfying which we never 
can know until we mourn. You would never see 
the stars if the sun continued to shine all through 
the twenty-four hours. The glare of human joy 
hides from our sight ten thousand blessings which 
we cannot see until our lives are darkened by some 
great grief. Some of the richest and most precious 
words of the Bible can be understood only when 
the soul is passing through some keen and lonely 
anguish. 

The monuments which some of you have reared 
in yonder cemetery over the resting-places of your 
dead serve only to commemorate your troubles and 
to keep alive your grief. Oh, that you had the 
Christian faith to convert those monuments into me- 
morials of God's wise and merciful discipline of 
your souls ! Oh, that you could stand by them and 
fully realize the blessedness of the truth that, 
" Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth ! " 

The surest way to get rid of the anguish which 
comes from looking back is to turn our faces to the 
future, with the determination to be, more than we 
have ever been, helpers and healers of our suffering 
fellow-men. Look through love's eyes upon your 
neighbor's troubles, and in your eagerness to bless 



46 EBENEZER 

him you will receive a blessing on your own soul 
that will lift it into a realm of peace and gladness. 
One of the noblest sentiments to be found in the 
world's literature was written by Kossuth, the great 
Hungarian patriot and martyr. He said : "If I had 
to choose my place among the forces of nature, do 
you know what I would choose to be ? I w T ould be 
the dew that falls silently and invisibly over the face 
of nature, trampled under foot and unconsidered, 
but perpetually blessing and refreshing all forms of 
life." In this losing of one's self in desire and 
effort for the good of others one finds the truest 
peace and the sweetest happiness which the human 
heart can know. 

If I can live to make some pale face brighter, if 
I can give a second lustre to some tear-dimmed eye, 
if I can impart one throb of comfort to an aching 
heart, if in passing through the w T orld I can cheer 
some way-worn soul, if I can lend a helping hand 
to the fallen, if I can discrown some wrong and 
diadem some right, my life will not have been in 
vain. The joy that is farthest from earth's alloy 
and nearest to the bliss of heaven is realized when 
conscience says, "You knew your duty to your 
fellow-man and you did it well." 



Ill 

GOD'S APPRECIATION OF HUMBLE 
SERVICE 



" Whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my 
name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, 
he shall not lose his reward." Mark 9 : 41. 

To me everything that belongs to Christianity 
is precious, but there is no feature of it which I 
admire and love more than its sympathy with the 
weak and lowly. When Jesus Christ entered upon 
his mission he sought neither favor nor recognition 
from men of authority and influence. Herod sat in 
his golden palace at Tiberias in dissolute splendor, 
but of him he took no notice except to say to his 
disciples : " Go ye and tell that fox." He wanted 
Herod to understand that he neither courted his 
favor nor dreaded his frown. He despised him, not 
for the office he held, but for the corrupt life which 
he lived. 

The Pharisees were the dominant religious party 
of Judea and were recognized as the religious aris- 
tocracy of their time. They swept through the 

47 



48 god's appreciation of humble service 

temple courts in their fringed robes with supreme 
haughtiness and with sovereign contempt for every- 
body who did not belong to their sect. For them 
Christ had no words but rebuke and reprobation. 
Their smiles and patronage he did not covet. 

The dreaded emperor was all-powerful at Rome. 
To him Jesus sent no appeal ; of him he sought no 
favor. He had no more regard for his influence than 
for that of the humblest subject of his empire. For 
worldly pride and display, for despotic power and 
cruelty, for extravagance and lust, he had nothing 
but frowns. But for suffering, weakness, and hum- 
ble fidelity, he had infinite compassion and love. 

To the haughty and self-sufficient he was wrath- 
ful as the storm, but to the feeble and lowly he was 
gentle as the summer's breeze. 

He pitied and loved the sick and the poor. He 
loved children, he loved sinners, and of all sinners 
he loved most those who had suffered most and those 
who were divorced from human respect and sym- 
pathy. 

True Christianity stretches out its hands, not to 
the mighty, but to the weak, and its victories have 
been won, not only without the help of the world's 
power, but in utter disregard of it. 

Christianity and not philosophy has taught us 
the inherent dignity of man. Christianity and not 
philosophy has taught us to appreciate man for 



god's appreciation of humble service 49 

those faculties which connect him with God and a 
boundless future. 

He who did not blush to sit at the banquet of the 
publican, who shrank not from the white touch of 
the leper, and who felt no pollution from the harlot's 
tears, has done more to secure for man the respect, 
sympathy, and affection of his fellows than all other 
people combined. 

From the life and teachings of Christ we learn 
the lesson that each man is as great as he is in God's 
sight and no greater. This thought is full of con- 
solation to those who are obscure and who feel that 
their individuality is lost in the multitude. 

God is no respecter of persons. Before him the 
world of mankind is but as the small dust of the 
balance. Is it anything to the ocean whether one 
foam speck upon its great bosom be larger or smaller 
than another? Gradations and eminences among 
creatures infinitesimal are not regarded by Him 
whose vision sweeps the infinite. 

The chief of a nation dies and cities drape them- 
selves in mourning ; the great bells toll, requiems are 
sung, solemn processions march through the streets, 
and a thousand other things are done to signalize the 
fact that a great man has fallen ; but to the great 
God, before whom his soul passes in all of its naked- 
ness, he is of no more importance than the little waif 
who dies on the street unpitied and unnoticed. Let 



50 god's appreciation of humble service 

us thank God that in his sight all are equally great 
and equally small. 

When we die the few who love us may build us 
a humble monument and write upon it a brief epi- 
taph. But in a few years the monument will decay, 
the inscription will be illegible, and we shall be for- 
gotten. But let us not be unmindful of the coun- 
terpart to this sad truth. Within each one of us 
there dwells an immortal spirit which is akin to 
God and infinitely precious in his sight. To him 
this is neither common nor obscure. 

God appreciates everything for the purposes for 
which he gave it existence. Every drop of rain 
has its mission. The shadow made by the tiniest 
insect's wing has its mission. For every human 
being upon this planet there is a divinely appointed 
mission, and in proportion to his fidelity to it he is 
worthy of approbation and honor. The only real 
and permanent greatness possible to us is in the 
line of duty and usefulness, and this is as open to 
every one of us as sunlight and air. When Jesus 
Christ says, " Whosoever shall give you a cup of 
water to drink in my name . . . shall not lose his 
reward/' he teaches that God's eye is upon his 
humblest servant, that he accepts the most incon- 
spicuous service, if inspired by benevolent motives, 
and that he will as truly reward the little gift of the 
pauper as the great gift of the millionaire. 



51 

The same lesson is embodied in the parable of 
the talents. That parable teaches us that God 
values us, not for the magnitude and splendor of 
the gifts which he has bestowed upon us, but for 
the fidelity with which we use them. It teaches us 
that, however small our talents and however meagre 
our opportunities, if we faithfully use them our re- 
ward shall be infinite. 

To the man who had wisely employed the two 
talents he gave the same plaudit which he bestowed 
upon him who had rightly used the five talents : 
" Well done, good and faithful servant." He re- 
ceived the same honor and was bidden to enter the 
same joy. The same reward would have been be- 
stowed upon the man who had received one talent 
if he had been as true and loyal as those to whom 
greater gifts were given. 

My friends, every man among you has a divinely 
bestowed talent, and by the wise and faithful use of 
it he can honor God, bless his fellow-men, and win 
for himself a joyous welcome to the skies. 

In the light of this truth every one should aspire 
to usefulness here and blessedness hereafter. O 
ye humble, feeble, hidden, unrecognized ones, look 
up and bless God that there are eyes above you that 
do see the light that is in you, and that your gift, 
though it be but the widow's mite or a cup of water, 
is registered in heaven. 



52 god's appreciation of humble service 

To-night, if you will lift your eyes to the sky, 
you will see some stars pre-eminent for their magni- 
tude, while others in the far-off milky way are al- 
most lost to vision. But though " one star differeth 
from another star in glory," all are of the same pure 
essence, all are the offspring of the same eternal 
sire. 

So it is in the kingdom of grace. There we be- 
hold towering men, kingly men, men upon whom 
God has lavished his richest gifts, men who shine 
with dazzling effulgence ; and there we behold ob- 
scure men, men endowed with but one talent, and 
whose light is as dim as that of the scarcely dis- 
cernible star. But they are children of the same 
father and servants of the same master. Their 
lights were kindled at the same fountain of glory. 
Each is fulfilling the mission to which he was called, 
and in the end they shall receive the same rapturous 
plaudit and be crowned with the same imperishable 
honor. 

I thank God when a rich man is truly converted 
and brought into the church. Houses of worship 
cannot be built without money. Colleges for the 
education of our children cannot be established 
without money. The preaching of the gospel can- 
not be sustained without money. Missionaries can- 
not be sent to China, Africa, Italy, and Mexico 
without money. Homes for the aged, retreats for 



god's appreciation of humble service 53 

the sick, and asylums for the poor cannot be erected 
without money. 

I praise God when he puts his grace into the 
heart of a rich man and makes him a true disciple 
of Christ, because that man, inspired by the love of 
God and humanity, may enlarge and multiply the 
agencies for the extension of Christ's kingdom and 
the redemption of the world. 

But let me assure you that poverty is as truly a 
talent as wealth. Some are called to be rich and 
others are called to be poor. In respect to the 
acquisition of worldly possessions, "there is a 
divinity which shapes our ends/' 

There are two kinds of poverty. One is envious 
and idle. It sits down in dirt and wretchedness, 
bemoans its hard fate, and curses the man of enter- 
prise and thrift. Such a poverty deserves neither 
sympathy nor respect. The other kind is manly, 
noble, and helpful. Having little besides daily 
bread, it possesses also the virtue of contentment, 
which makes happy the humblest lot. 

If any have come up to this house from homes of 
poverty, if any who have recently put on Christ in 
baptism and been admitted to fellowship in this 
body of Christians are struggling with the incon- 
veniences of penury, I would say to them that there 
is no disgrace in honest poverty and that they can 
make it a beautiful and happy lot. 



54 god's appreciation of humble service 

There are some men and women in this world 
whose estimates of other people are not only unjust, 
but disgustingly vulgar. They look with contempt 
upon self-denial, whatever be the motive behind it. 
They sneer at the scant table and the threadbare 
garb of the honest laborer, forgetting that such a 
man may be rich in every element of a noble life; 
forgetting that our divine Lord placed on the 
pinnacle of human greatness one w T hose raiment 
was coarse earners hair and whose meat was locusts 
and wild honey ; forgetting that some of the greatest 
of the apostles were poor fishermen of the Galilean 
lake, and that their divine Lord and master was so 
poor that he had not where to lay his head. I 
would rather have the virtues of such men than the 
wealth of " Twenty seas, whose shores were pearl, 
whose waters were crystal, and whose rocks were 
gold." 

Poverty is no barrier to usefulness. The lips of 
contemptuous Pharisees might curl when the poor 
widow dropped her two mites into the temple 
treasury, but in the eyes of Him who sees the hearts 
of men that poor widow gave more than all the 
Pharisees. 

The poverty of Luther did not disqualify him for 
fighting and winning the battles of the Reformation 
and for establishing principles of truth and righteous- 
ness that shall live forever. 



god's appreciation of humble service 55 

Those whose intellectual gifts are meagre and 
feeble, and who realize their incompetence for great 
and conspicuous undertakings, I would exhort to 
work on without discouragement and without one 
thought of the inconspicuous character of their serv- 
ice. Fidelity is better than greatness and fame. 

Do your best, assured that God would not love 
you more if you had the genius of a Milton or a 
Newton. Work with the same manly self-respect 
that you would have if you knew that senates were 
listening to your words and empires were being 
molded by your counsels. Work hopefully and 
confidently, knowing that God approves and angels 
applaud, and that when your task is done the gates 
of glory will open to receive you. The secret of 
success and happiness in this life is to be just where 
God would have you and to do just the work which 
God has committed to your hands. Before him, 

Honor and fame from no condition rise ; 
Act well your part ; there all the honor lies. 

There is a Christian ceremony which signifies 
that those who submit to it have merged their wills 
into the will of God, their thoughts into the thought 
of God, and their lives into the life of God. This 
is what is meant by being " buried with Christ in 
baptism." The man who has thus identified himself 
with the limitless resources of the Infinite cannot 



56 god's appreciation of humble service 



fail to be good and great. The possibilities of such 
a man's life cannot be measured by any human 
mind, and neither the highest art nor the highest 
eloquence can depict the glory of the immortality to 
which he is destined. 



IV 
THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 



"Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
church ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be 
bound in heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth 
shall be loosed in heaven." Matt. 16 : 18, 19. 

At the time Jesus spoke these words Peter had a 
clearer conception of his character and mission than 
any other disciple. The common idea among the 
Jews was that the Messiah would be simply a 
divinely commissioned man, under whose leadership 
they would regain their former power and prosperity. 
Some of the apostles, while they believed Jesus to 
be the Messiah, did not exalt him much above the 
Messianic conception of the average Jew. 

When Christ put to the disciples the question, 
" Whom say ye that I am ? " Peter, remembering 
all that he had heard him say, and all the wonder- 
ful things that he had seen him do, and illumined 
and uplifted by the divine influence which at that 
moment radiated from the person of the speaker, 

57 



58 THE CHUKCH BUILT ON PETEK 

promptly and fervently replied, "Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God." 

It was this exhibition of superior intelligence, 
zeal, and courage in Peter that drew from the lips 
of the Master the words of our text : " Thou art 
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; 
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom 
of heaven." 

Paul says, we " are built on the foundation of the 
apostles, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner- 
stone." In the visible organization of his kingdom 
in the world Christ began with Peter. He had two 
reasons for beginning with him. Peter was the 
first disciple to declare the true conception of his 
Messianic character, and more than any other dis- 
ciple he possessed those qualities which were needed 
to advance the triumphs of his gospel. 

I think that Jesus meant to say about this : 
" Peter, you are the first of my followers to dis- 
tinctly comprehend and announce my true character 
and mission, and you, more than any other man, 
have developed those traits of character which are 
to distinguish my subjects from the subjects of Satan. 
For these reasons, in building my church, I will be- 
gin with you. I am the foundation and you are the 
first stone that I will lay upon it. By giving you 
the first place, I will let the world know what sort 



THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 59 

of material is needed for this sacred edifice. I will 
give unto you the keys of my kingdom. When I 
have left the world, you shall be the first to declare 
to guilty men the terms of salvation. I will endorse 
your proclamations of my truth. As you will speak 
for me, and by the direction of my Spirit, those who 
accept your words shall be admitted into my king- 
dom, and those who reject them shall be excluded." 

There is not a fragment of Scripture which sup- 
ports the idea that Peter had more authority than 
the other apostles. There is not a word in the New 
Testament that warrants us in believing that Peter 
was the head of the church, and that the other 
apostles and disciples were subordinates who obeyed 
him. That doctrine is the invention of priestcraft. 

Against the church "the gates of hell shall not 
prevail." The word hell in this passage is a trans- 
lation of the Greek word " hades," and means the 
grave, or the unseen world. The gates of the grave 
shall not prevail against the church. That means 
that the church shall never be annihilated by the 
death of Christian believers. There shall never 
come a time when Christians cannot be found on 
the earth. There shall never come a time when 
there will not be organizations of human beings who 
will believe just what Peter believed concerning 
Christ, and who will be like him in character and 
conduct. 



60 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 

In our interpretations of this passage we may be 
far apart at many points, but all of us believe that 
Jesus meant to confer a special distinction upon 
Peter, and to present him to the world as a man of 
exceptionally great virtues. 

I wish you to consider with me those elements of 
Peter's character which rendered him worthy of the 
honor bestowed upon him by his divine Master. 
He was not a perfect man. He had weaknesses, and 
some of them were very conspicuous and offensive. 
But notwithstanding his infirmities he possessed cer- 
tain virtues in a degree which rendered him pre-emi- 
nently noble. What were those virtues ? 

1. One was his freedom from cunning duplicity. 
He was as transparent as the day. He attempted 
no concealment of his feelings and purposes. He 
meant what he said and said what he thought and 
felt. If he loved a man he would let him see it 
at once. If he disliked him, there was no delay or 
indirection in making him sensible of the fact. His 
loves and animosities, joys and griefs, hopes and 
fears, always came to the surface. 

He was not a politician. He got office, but did 
not seek it. It sought him. In this respect he was 
very unlike James and John, who counseled with 
their ambitious mother, and then sent her secretly 
to ask the Master to give them the two highest 
offices in his Messianic kingdom. 



THE OHUECH BUILT ON PETER 61 

Contrast this simple-hearted, undesigning, un- 
calculating, straightforward man with the modern 
political office-seeker. Contrast his transparent 
methods with those of the average politician who 
covets an office in the gift of the Legislature. I 
have observed that when a man has determined to 
be a candidate before that honorable body, he does 
not immediately announce his purpose, but hides it 
for a season in the solitude of his own innocent 
breast. He first goes out on a campaign of dis- 
interested patriotism, to educate the people into sym- 
pathy with his views on certain political measures. 
Just what his views are depends very largely upon 
the political complexion of the locality where he 
rises to speak. If he strikes a community that is 
about evenly divided on the silver question, he can 
straddle that issue and make his auditors believe 
that the only salvation for the country is in tariff 
reform. If he goes into a manufacturing district 
where there is a strong protection sentiment, he can 
be grandly eloquent in declaiming against the rob- 
beries of the "Gold Bugs," and produce the im- 
pression that all our country's woes are traceable to 
the demonetization of silver. If he visits a com- 
munity where the feeling is bitter against corpora- 
tions, his slogan is, " Let us have a railroad com- 
mission." If he enters one where the railroads 
are in favor with the people, he passes over the 



62 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 

commission question and pours out a torrent of in- 
vective upon the federal administration, because it 
refuses to recognize the belligerent rights of the 
struggling and long-suffering Cubans. 

He performs all this patriotic work at his own 
expense and at an enormous sacrifice of his private 
interests. A few days before the assembling of the 
Legislature he writes a letter to each member of 
that patriotic body, telling him of the great work 
that he has done, of the self-denials he has practised 
for the good of the country, and begging his support 
for a certain office, that he may continue to make an 
oblation of himself. 

If by such means, or any other device, he secures 
the place which he covets, he is profoundly sur- 
prised. He declares that it was an honor he did 
not seek, and that he accepts it, not to gratify any 
ambition of his own, but to please his friends and 
to strengthen the cause of his oppressed and bleeding 
country. 

In these latter days such frankness and sincerity 
as were illustrated by the Apostle Peter are looked 
upon as weaknesses. Inscrutability is the ideal 
virtue in modern politics. To conceal your real 
purpose and reach the prize you covet by indirection 
and circumlocution is the favorite wisdom. To be 
open and ingenuous is foolish. Look wise and say 
but little ; wrap yourself in a veil of mystery ; in 



THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 63 

the presence of a newspaper reporter be as silent as 
a mummy and as frigid as an iceberg, and you will 
be credited with more than Solomonic wisdom and 
greatness. 

A man who is disposed to be very frank in every- 
thing may sometimes go too far and do wrong. 
Peter was wrong when he said to the Master, " Thou 
shalt never wash my feet." But when he was re- 
buked for it and saw his mistake, with the deepest 
humility and penitence he exclaimed, " Not my feet 
only, but my head and my hands." He was wrong 
when he ventured to rebuke Jesus for saying that 
he must go up to Jerusalem and be put to death. 
But with all of his indiscreetness and rashness 
Christ preferred him to other men, who though 
more cautious and prudent than he, were less candid 
and transparent. He wanted for his most conspicu- 
ous standard-bearer a man whose motives were 
always visible, and who could always be relied upon 
to say just what he believed and felt. 

2. Another virtue which endeared Peter to our 
Lord, and rendered him worthy of the honor be- 
stowed upon him, was illustrated by the promptness 
with which he obeyed every conviction and seized 
every opportunity to serve the cause of truth and 
righteousness. He lost no time in protracted de- 
liberation over anything. He thought rapidly and 
reached his conclusions quickly. 



64 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 

When the apostles were questioned about, any 
matter he was always the first to answer. When 
Jesus said to them, " Will ye also go away ? " Peter 
instantly responded, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? 
Thou hast the words of eternal life." On another 
occasion, when the Master said, " Whom say ye that 
I am ? " the same disciple promptly replied, " Thou 
art the Christ, the Son of the living God." When 
he and John ran to the sepulchre, John paused be- 
fore the open door to consider the propriety of enter- 
ing. He shuddered at the thought of doing anything 
that had the appearance of presumption or irrever- 
ence. But Peter debated that question while he 
was running. When he reached the grave his mind 
was made up. Without a tremor or the slightest 
hesitation, he stepped down into the hallowed place 
to see if his beloved Lord had risen from the dead. 
When messengers came to him from Joppa, request- 
ing him to go to that city and comfort those who 
had been plunged into sorrow by the death of Dor- 
cas, he arose at once and returned with the messen- 
gers. With the same promptness he responded to 
the summons of Cornelius. 

Peter's disposition to act quickly sometimes led 
him into serious mistakes. When the mob went 
into the garden to arrest the Master, the first im- 
pulse of this apostle was to defend him and resent 
the indignity, and without taking time to confer 



THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 65 

with any one or to forecast the consequences of the 
act, he drew his sword and severed a man's ear from 
his head. This was a very grave mistake, and he 
w T as severely rebuked for it. But notwithstanding 
the haste of his temper, which rendered him liable 
to commit such hurtful blunders, he had the quali- 
ties of a great leader, and in the judgment of our 
Lord he was better suited than any other disciple to 
guide the little sacramental band in pioneering the 
cause of his gospel and kingdom. 

It is very easy to criticise Peter and to deplore 
his lack of deliberation and prudence ; but it is an 
undeniable fact that only men of his type have 
made any great and enduring contribution to the 
world's advancement. 

John the Baptist was a man of the same tempera- 
ment. If he had been w 7 hat the modern world calls 
" a prudent man/' he would not have branded the 
high-church aristocracy of Judea as " a generation 
of vipers." If he had been what we are wont to 
call " a discreet man," he would not have rebuked 
the royal Herod for his unlawful marriage. His 
lack of modern tact, shrewdness, and caution ex- 
posed him to many troubles and finally cost him his 
life. 

If John the Baptist were on the earth to-day there 
are many churches that would not admit him to 
their pulpits. They would be afraid to turn him 



66 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 

loose on the Pharisees and Sadducees of the nine- 
teenth century. Such a deliverance as he would 
make on the extravagances, sins, and hypocrisies of 
modern social life could not fail to disturb the sensi- 
bilities of many a pew-renter, and sadly diminish 
the revenues of the congregation with w r hich he 
worships. But without the very qualities which 
made him so offensive to the Pharisees of his time 
and which provoked the wrath of Herod and his 
household, he could not have accomplished the work 
that God commissioned him to perform. 

Who doubts that if John the Baptist should come 
out of his grave to-day, and preach one such sermon 
in Nashville as he was wont to preach along the 
banks of the Jordan, it would do more to renovate 
our social life and to promote true repentance 
toward God than all that will ever be said by that 
class of ministers who are too gentle, tender, and 
politic, to denounce any exhibition of fashionable 
vice and folly. 

If Martin Luther had waited to take counsel of 
the wise men of his day, or until he could proceed 
without peril to himself and his sympathizers, he 
would have wrought no reformation. He was a 
minute man. He waited for nothing but God. It 
was the celerity as well as the boldness of his 
movements that startled the world and secured for 
him the backing which made him victorious. 






THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 67 

What was the most conspicuous quality of the 
men who followed George Washington in the battles 
of the Revolution, and who won for American 
soldiery immortal fame? It was promptitude. 
They did not wait to see how the tide of war would 
turn, or until they should be forced into service by 
conscript laws. They were patriots and heroes, who 
answered to the first bugle blast, hastened to the 
front, and felt the first shock of battle. 

Men and brethren, in the honor which Christ 
conferred upon the hasty-tempered Peter we see 
God's profound appreciation of the virtue of prompti- 
tude. "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" 
Whatsover your hands find to do, you should do 
at once and with all your might. I say to you 
who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but have 
never confessed him in baptism, that in God's 
righteous judgment your delay is not only unwar- 
ranted but unmanly and ignoble. I say to church- 
members who have never gone down into the smoke 
and flame of a single battle for the Lord's cause 
that Jesus Christ has no honors for the mere Sunday 
morning dress-parade soldier. "No labor, no re- 
ward ; no cross, no crown," is a law of his kingdom 
that shall stand forever. 

3. Another reason that Christ had for conferring 
such distinction upon Peter was that he was as 
brave as he was frank and prompt. He dared to do 



68 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 

his duty in the face of difficulties and dangers. I 
anticipate a criticism upon this assertion. You will 
say, " How do you reconcile your statement with 
Peter's denial of Christ ? " It is a sufficient answer 
to your objection to say that a brave man is not 
absolutely fearless. The most courageous man may 
sometimes be smitten with fear. He may even run 
from danger. There is not a battle-scarred soldier 
among you who will not bear witness to the truth of 
this statement. Some of us have seen the heroes 
of a hundred bloody conflicts retreat in disorder and 
with dismay when pressed by overwhelming numbers. 
Peter was panic-stricken in the presence of the 
howling mob that gathered around the judgment 
hall. Overcome by the peril of his situation, he 
denied his Lord and Master. I am not his apolo- 
gist. I do not excuse him. I condemn him. But 
justice and truth require us to admit that it was 
the only occasion in his long and eventful Christian 
career where fear kept him from doing his duty. 
Let it be admitted also that he was not the only 
apostle who was panic-stricken in that awful crisis. 
When Jesus was arrested, all of them, save Peter 
and John, forsook him and fled. These two men 
followed him back into the city and even into the 
judgment hall. There it was that Peter denied 
him. I am almost sure that John too would have 
denied him if he had been questioned as Peter was. 






THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 69 

When we place before us the whole history of 
Peter, we must admit that he was a man of extraor- 
dinary courage. Look at him as he stands before 
the council after he has enraged the Jews by charg- 
ing them with the murder of Christ. He stands 
there and speaks the truth in utter defiance of that 
august tribunal and the how r ling populace which 
surrounds it. When he is told that he must not 
again speak in the name of the Lord Jesus, he looks 
calmly into the faces of the judges and replies : 
" Whether it be right, in the sight of God, to hearken 
unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we 
cannot but speak the things which we have seen and 
heard." 

Surely that was not the conduct of a coward. 
The man who will speak the truth where it is 
despised, and w T hen he knows that his fidelity will 
be punished not only with social and religious ostra- 
cism, but with bonds, imprisonment, and stripes, is 
not a coward. 

Peter's courage sometimes degenerated into rash- 
ness ; but notwithstanding this weakness, Christ 
honored him more than any other disciple. Jesus 
knew that he was a hero, and that he would carry 
his crimson banner into the darkness and fury of 
any conflict By putting this heroic apostle in the 
most conspicuous position, by elevating him to the 
highest pinnacle of distinction, Jesus knew that he 



70 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 

would emphasize and magnify, throughout all genera- 
tions, the importance of Christian courage. 

Brethren, that quality is just as essential to 
Christian integrity and success in these latter days 
as it was in Peter's time. Our power to touch 
human hearts, to transform human lives, and to 
cleanse the moral atmosphere about us of its foul 
pollutions, is in proportion to the courage which 
we exhibit in speaking and acting the truth in the 
presence of opposition and danger. 

Courage ! courage ! Oh, for more of that virtue 
which made the most conspicuous element in the 
character of the greatest apostle ! I would rather 
have the power which that virtue imparts to the 
human soul than to wield the sceptre of earth's 
proudest monarch. 

Here, then, are the three qualities which in com- 
bination made Peter the ideal Christian and the 
ideal preacher — sincerity, promptitude, and courage. 

When Jesus Christ said that he would build his 
church on Peter, and that the gates of the grave 
should never prevail against it, he meant that in 
every subsequent age there would be Christians in 
the world as honest and prompt and brave as Peter. 
Look over the long roll of the Christian martyrs, 
and you will find that, up to the present date, this 
prophecy has been fulfilled. 

Paul was such a Christian. His dying testimony 



THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 71 

to his own fidelity was : " I have fought a good 
fight ; I have finished my course ; I have kept the 
faith." 

Polycarp was such a Christian. As he stood 
upon his funeral pile, and the flames were kindling 
about his naked feet, he was exhorted to save his 
life by denying Christ. His reply was : " I can 
never deny him who was too brave and too noble to 
save himself by denying me." 

Chrysostom was such a Christian. When threat- 
ened with exile, he stood in his pulpit and anathe- 
matized the licentiousness of the clergy and the 
wicked despotism of the crown. 

John Bunyan was such a Christian. Twelve 
years of confinement in Bedford jail did not cure 
him of his determination "to preach the gospel 
without the license of the king." 

Carey, the pioneer of modern missions, and Jucl- 
son, his dauntless and long-suffering co-laborer in 
the same sacred cause, and Charles Spurgeon, w 7 ho 
could neither be flattered off nor frightened off from 
the straight line of gospel integrity, were such 
Christians. 

Heroes as dauntless as they may be found even 
in this wicked generation. " Till time's last thun- 
der shakes the world," God will have brave and 
faithful witnesses among men. The perpetuity of 
this type of men insures the perpetuity of the 



72 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 

church. The church stands to-day towering in 
strength and grandeur above the wreck and ruin of 
ten thousand opposing institutions. It will live and 
flourish under the smile and guidance of its divine 
Founder, when all who now malign and smite it 
lie buried in their graves, epitaphed with the repro- 
bation of the world. 

Happy Zion ! What a favored lot is thine. 



V 
FINAL REWARD 



" Well done, thou good and faithful servant : thou hast 
been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over 
many things : enter thou into the joy of thy lord." Matt. 
25 : 21. 

"Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: 
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matt. 
25 : 30. 

In this chapter there are three parables, but they 
illustrate the same subject. They set forth the 
principle or law which will regulate the judgment 
of the great day. In that day those who have 
served God wisely and faithfully shall be rewarded 
with honor and happiness, but those who have been 
slothful, wicked, and unprofitable shall be condemned 
and punished. Against that law no human con- 
science will rebel. The principle embodied in the 
parable of the talents is universally accepted. 

What is it that is rewarded here ? It is industry 
and faithfulness — an honest effort to make the most 
of life. " Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five 
talents : behold I have gained beside them five 
talents more." 

73 



74 FINAL, REWARD 

This servant had been thoughtful, active, and 
frugal. In every respect he had been true and 
loyal. He had used his master's money so wisely 
and faithfully that he was able to return twice the 
amount which he had received. The master, recog- 
nizing and appreciating his fidelity, said : " Well 
done, good and faithful servant : thou hast been 
faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler 
over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy 
lord." 

He that had received the one talent came and 
said, " Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, 
reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering 
where thou hast not strawed : And I was afraid, 
and went and hid thy talent in the earth." To him 
the master replied : ' ' Thou wicked and slothful 
servant. . . Thou oughtest to have put my money to 
the exchangers, and then at my coming I should 
have received mine own with usury. Take there- 
fore the talent from him, and give it unto him 
which hath ten talents. . . And cast ye the un- 
profitable servant into outer darkness : there shall 
be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 

More than eighteen and a half centuries have 
passed since that parable was first spoken, but during 
this long period not one human being has ever 
questioned the wisdom or justice of that master who 
commended and rewarded his faithful servant, but 



FINAL REWARD 75 

condemned and punished the one who was wicked 
and slothful. 

" Well done, good and faithful servant." It is 
faithfulness and not success that is here rewarded. 
If the servant to whom the five talents were given 
had come to his lord and said, "I have labored 
long and diligently, but have acccomplished noth- 
ing," the master would have replied, " Well done, 
my servant ; it was not success that I required of 
thee, but fidelity. Enter thou into the joy of thy 
lord." 

This parable is a miniature picture of the final 
judgment. In it is set forth the principle which 
will determine the character and destiny of every 
human being at that august tribunal. 

In that day men shall be rewarded not for success, 
but for faithfulness. 

Let us not misuse this comforting truth. While 
it is true that it is not success but fidelity that God 
will reward, it is also true that faithful service in 
God's kingdom is never unproductive. 

A man may try to be a mechanic and fail. If he 
has no aptitude for mechanical work, he is sure to 
fail. I know a poor fellow who has been trying for 
thirty years to make a physician of himself and has 
not yet succeeded. Sad, seedy, and forlorn, he sits 
at his office window, looks out upon the world, and 
bewails not only his hard fate, but the folly of those 



76 FINAL REWARD 

who refuse to confide in his medical skill. There 
are contributors tQ the poetical columns of our city 
newspapers who will get neither money nor fame for 
their labor. There are some dear women who sit up 
all night to write odes to posterity which posterity 
will never see. That a man may make an honest 
effort to be a statesman and fail is a proposition 
which no one will deny who has studied the history 
of the Tennessee Legislature. 

I am sure that no man ever honestly tried to be a 
Christian and failed. " Ask, and ye shall receive : 
seek, and ye shall find : knock, and it shall be opened 
unto you. Every one that asketh, reeeiveth, and he 
that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, it 
shall be opened." 

There is not the possibility of failure in this di- 
rection. Any man who wants the great salvation 
revealed in the gospel of Christ can have it if he will 
humbly and honestly seek it. Cast yourself as a 
suppliant at the feet of him who pitied publicans 
and harlots and opened the gate of paradise to the 
penitent thief, and it shall be instantly written in 
heaven, " Thy sins which are many are all forgiven." 

No Christian ever failed in a scriptural effort to 
grow in spiritual strength and usefulness. You can- 
not go into a gymnasium and systematically exercise 
your limbs for twelve months without increasing 
your physical strength and activity. Neither can 



FINAL REWARD 77 

you systematically labor in God's vineyard without 
promoting your spiritual vitality and power. 

Fidelity in any department of Christian work 
succeeds. These Christian women who consecrate 
themselves to the service of the poor, the sick, and 
the helpless, do not labor in vain ? The Christian 
men and women who strive to be useful in Sunday- 
school and mission work, do not fail ? They may 
accomplish much less than they desire and hope to 
accomplish, but their divine Master has decreed that 
their labor shall not be unfruitful. 

Working for God is never an experiment. It is 
not casting seed on unproductive soil. In God's 
kingdom no effort at usefulness is lost. Paul wrote 
to the Corinthian Christians : " My beloved brethren, 
be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the 
work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your 
labor is not in vain in the Lord." 

The faithful servants in this parable were justly 
treated. Who can doubt that our heavenly Master 
is just in bestowing eternal honor and happiness 
upon those who devote their lives to his service? 

But look at the treatment received by the un- 
profitable servant who hid his master's money in the 
earth. He was branded as unprofitable and cast 
into outer darkness because he had made no use of 
his master's money. His punishment was as just as 
the reward bestowed upon the faithful servant. 



78 FINAL REWARD 

The excuse which he made for his idleness was 
that he had received only one talent, and that with 
so small a capital he was unable to do anything in 
the great world of trade. In reply to this fallacious 
defense the master said, " Thou oughtest to have 
put my money to the exchangers." He meant that 
if the servant felt that he was incompetent to trade 
successfully with the small amount of money which 
he had received, he should have taken it to a bank- 
ing institution, where it could have been consolidated 
with other funds and loaned for a good per cent. 
He was perfectly competent to do that much, and 
having failed to do it he was condemned and 
punished. 

God does not condemn any man for having failed 
to do what he had not the capacity to accomplish. 
His wrath falls only upon those who stubbornly re- 
fuse to make any wise use of their talents and 
opportunities. 

To all his people, in all ages, Christ said, " Go ye 
into all the world, and preach the gospel to every 
creature." There are some Christians who have 
neither the capacity nor the opportunity to do the 
work of a foreign missionary, and yet they are not 
exempt from responsibility in this great enterprise. 
What you cannot do in person, you can do through 
others. You can put your money to the exchangers. 
You can place your talent with some organized body 



FINAL EEWARD 79 

of Christians who will use it in sending the gospel 
into " the regions beyond." 

The money that I am able to give would not sup- 
port a missionary, but that does not relieve me of 
responsibility. What I cannot do alone, I can do 
by acting in concert with others. I can put my 
little talent to the exchangers. I can drop it into 
the treasury of some missionary body, where it w 7 ill 
be added to a thousand other contributions and used 
for the furtherance of the Lord's cause. 

There are persons in this church who will not 
give anything to its support on the ground that their 
poverty prevents them from making such a contri- 
bution as would be creditable to them and helpful 
to the church. They imagine that this relieves 
them of all obligation to give. They deceive them- 
selves. The poor man's gift alone would not sup- 
port the church, but added to a hundred other gifts 
it would support it. 

It is not what one man alone is able to do that 
makes his responsibility, but what he can do in 
combination with a thousand other men. In associ- 
ate effort each man's labor, whether great or small, 
becomes important and effective. 

I cannot go out here and single handed overthrow 
these dirty dens of iniquity which are the fruitful 
sources of vice and crime. If I could, they should 
not live another day. But this does not relieve me 



80 FINAL REWARD 

from all responsibility for their existence. What I 
cannot do alone, I may accomplish in combination 
with the thousands of virtuous men and women of 
this city who are ready to join me in a crusade 
against any social evil. 

We find in this parable the same law of judgment 
contained in each of the other two parables of the 
same chapter. 

The unprofitable servant is cast into " outer dark- 
ness" because he failed to make use of his talent. 
He had doubtless done many wicked things, but 
here mention is made only of the wickedness of 
his idleness. 

Why were the " foolish virgins" shut out from 
the marriage supper ? This punishment was not in- 
flicted upon them because they had done certain evil 
things, but because they had neglected an important 
duty. " They took no oil with their lamps." 

Jesus Christ points us to the final application of 
this law in another parable, where the righteous and 
the wicked are divided, as a shepherd divideth his 
sheep from the goats. " Then shall he say also unto 
them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, 
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels." 

For what were they thus punished ? Not for 
wicked deeds which they had performed, but simply 
for their neglect of duty. " I was a hungered and 



FINAL, REWARD 81 

and ye gave me no meat : I was thirsty, and ye 
gave me no drink : I was a stranger, and ye took 
me not in : naked, and ye clothed me not : sick, and 
in prison, and ye visited me not." 

A few years ago I spent a day in hunting with 
the Nimrod of the Virginia mountains. We had 
not gone far into the forest when he dismounted and, 
seizing one of the most quiet and seemingly in- 
offensive dogs I ever saw, slipped a rope over his 
neck, suspended him from the limb of a tree, and 
left him there to die. As we rode away from the 
tragic scene, I asked him for an explanation of his 
conduct. His reply was, " Anything as worthless as 
that dog has no right to live." For the very same 
reason our Lord and Master pronounced his curse 
upon the fruitless fig tree. God's immutable law is, 
that whatsoever is unprofitable must perish. 

Who questions the right of a merchant to dis- 
charge a lazy and worthless clerk ? Who questions 
the right of the State to dismiss from its service an 
official who habitually neglects the duties of his 
position ? 

If the chief executive of our republic should 
leave the seat of government and wander over the 
country to the utter neglect of the affairs of his 
great office, public sentiment everywhere would 
demand his impeachment. 

While this principle is recognized and enforced 



82 FINAL KEWARD 

by all human government, there are people in every 
community who cling to the delusion that it is left 
out of God's administration. They admit that jus- 
tice and the welfare of the universe demand the 
punishment of every positive and willful violation 
of divine law. They do not doubt that God's 
righteous indignation will be inflicted upon liars, 
swindlers, drunkards, adulterers, thieves, and mur- 
derers. They concede that such characters deserve 
to be cast into " outer darkness/' but they indulge 
the vain hope that the spiritual idler — the man who 
has simply failed to be useful — will escape the 
retribution of the wicked. 

How incompatible is this thought with God's re- 
vealed will ! How can men cherish it and believe 
in the words of God's Christ ? It is a contradiction 
not only of the Bible, but of their own God-given 
instincts. Idleness is wickedness, and God says, 
" The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the 
nations that forgot God." 

My friend, what are you? Are you a faithful 
servant or an idler? You may be the busiest of 
men in secular pursuits ; you may be a merchant 
burdened with all the cares and complications of an 
extensive trade, or you may be a lawyer engaged in 
the most extensive practice ; but if your secular voca- 
tion is divorced from religion and you are doing 
nothing to advance God's kingdom of truth and 



FINAL REWAED 83 

righteousness, you are an idler, an unprofitable serv- 
ant whose reward will be an eternal heritage of 
shame and anguish. 

Where art thou? Where do you stand with 
reference to God's Messiah? Have you received 
him as your Saviour, and bowed to him as your 
Master ? Can you look up into his face to-day and 
say, " Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest 
that I love thee ? " 

Where art thou ? Are you still in the kingdom 
of Satan, still impenitent, unregenerate, without 
God, and without hope? If so, you are an un- 
profitable servant, whose end is destruction. 

"Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer 
darkness : there shall be weeping and gnashing of 
teeth." What is meant by these figures of speech 
I will not attempt to explain. Outer darkness, the 
smoke of torment, the undying worm, and the fire 
that is never quenched, are horrors which my 
imagination is too feeble to depict. 

We know that one element of the perdition of 
ungodly men is remorse. Every one of us has felt 
the sting of a guilty conscience. Last night as you 
walked out on the thoroughfare and watched a long 
procession of human beings go by, you saw the face 
of one whom you supposed to be dead, and instantly 
the brightness went out of your life. The pave- 
ment beneath you seemed to sink, and everything 



84 FINAL REWARD 

above you threatened to fall upon your defenseless 
head, as the old sin, committed years ago, stood be- 
fore you, and the voice of your guilty conscience 
whispered, u Son, remember! remember!" That 
was only a touch of the worm that dieth not, and 
of the fire that is never quenched. 






VI 

TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS 
COUNTERFEITS 1 



"I have called you friends.' ' John 15 : 15. 

The First Baptist Church of Nashville welcomes 
this morning to her sanctuary a large company of 
visitors from the State of Alabama. I am happy 
to be the medium through which this welcome is 
extended, because I first saw the light of day on 
the soil of that commonwealth, and because in this 
gathering of her sons and daughters are many 
friends who stood by me in the earlier years of my 
ministry, cheered and strengthened me in my efforts 
to overcome the wrong and establish the right. 

I think it will be profitable to us, in view of the 
peculiar circumstances which have brought us to- 
gether this morning, to consider the basis of true 
friendship, the functions of it, and the value of it. 

Friendship is independent of blood. I do not 
have to consult the history of my progenitors, and 

1 Delivered before the Alabama refugees from yellow fever, 
October 3, 1897. 

85 



86 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 

look through the various branches of my family 
tree, to find out whether a certain man is my friend, 
and whether I am under any obligation to be his 
friend. Blood is a tie, and in some instances a very 
strong one, but friendship is something higher, finer, 
and more divine than the tie of blood. 

Friendship is not familiar acquaintance. I may 
spend half of my life in the company of a man, 
live in the same house with him, travel with him, 
and participate with him in a thousand pleasures 
without approximating the feeling or state which we 
call friendship. "Let me introduce you to my 
friend," is a conventional expression which in 
ninety-nine cases in a hundred contains a falsehood. 
You call thousands of men friends only because you 
see them often and your relations with them are 
agreeable and pleasant. 

There may be the truest friendship where there is 
but little personal acquaintance and intercourse. 
We are reluctant to come close to some people 
whom we sincerely love, and for whom we would 
sacrifice property, comfort, and peace, and even im- 
peril our lives. The fact that we keep away from 
them, make no demands upon them, and secretly 
promote their interests, is the best proof of the 
genuineness of our friendship. 

Let me recall a very pleasing incident of my own 
history, which illustrates the truth that familiar 



TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 87 

acquaintance and personal intercourse are not essen- 
tial to true friendship. About thirty-four years ago 
I stood before a great assemblage of people in the 
city of Montgomery, pleading for a great cause. 
At the conclusion of my sermon a distinguished 
public man, occupying the highest place in the gift 
of the people of his State, a man to whom I had 
never been introduced and whose face I had seldom 
seen, approached me quietly and modestly, laid his 
hand upon my shoulder, and said, " God bless you, 
young man ! " With a tropical suddenness, the 
impulses excited in that moment budded and blos- 
somed into an undying friendship. 

Between that occasion and his death we had only 
a few brief conversations. Our homes were not far 
apart, and for nearly four years I was his pastor, 
but we were never intimate. Only two or three 
times did we exchange visits, and yet for more than 
thirty years we were as loyal to each other as David 
and Jonathan. Each was on guard for the other, 
and each eagerly and gladly seized upon every oppor- 
tunity to advance the other in his chosen vocation. 
His tongue is silent, his great heart beats no more ; 
but the memory of his sweet friendship lingers with 
me like a dream of heaven. 

Friendship is not sympathy for one of the same 
age, nor for one of the same tastes and habits, nor 
for one pursuing the same vocation. 



88 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 

I have seen the young ivy cling tremblingly but 
tenaciously to the gnarled oak. I have seen the 
tender honeysuckle come and kiss the gray buttresses 
and twine itself around the cold stone of a massive 
Corinthian column. So too I have seen the frail 
and timid child cling to a stalwart and rugged man, 
whose face was like the frowning front of Mars. I 
have seen men hoary with age and stored with wis- 
dom turning away from their peers to seek compan- 
ions and friends among children that were as playful 
as lambs and as gay as butterflies. 

Friendship is not agreement in political and re- 
ligious views. There are thousands of men standing 
close to me around the same political banner, and 
marching with me in the same religious procession, 
for whom I have about as much affinity as water has 
for oil. 

Friendship is compatible with the widest diver- 
gences of opinions, both in politics and religion. 
Every honest Democrat believes that there are 
thousands of honest Republicans, and every honest 
Republican believes that there are thousands of 
honest Democrats, and where men are mutually 
honest they can be to each other the best of friends. 

There are Alabamians before me to-day who well 
remember when William L. Yancey and Henry W. 
Hilliard were central and colossal figures in Alabama 
politics. The former was a Demosthenes in the 



TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 89 

cause of Democracy, while the latter was a Cicero 
in the ranks of Whiggery. A hundred times they 
faced each other in the forum of public debate. It 
was a battle of giants. Roman gladiators never 
fought with more courage and determination. But 
these men, who stood so far apart in politics, and 
who inflicted such herculean blows upon each other 
in political warfare, were personal friends. Each 
believed the other to be honest, pure, patriotic, and 
brave. Where men have such confidence in each 
other there is no barrier to friendship. 

God pity the man whose friendships are limited 
either by his political affiliations or his religious 
belief. 

What, then, is friendship? It is the inter- 
marriage of two human souls that are inspired by 
mutual respect, confidence, and love, and by a desire 
and purpose to live for each other's welfare. 

Some theological writer has spoken of friendship 
as a development of the principle of the incarnation. 
God became man that he might save and exalt man, 
and enrich him with all the blessings which the 
Infinite can bestow upon the finite. God became 
man because he loved man, and because, by taking 
man's nature into fellowship with his own, he could 
more fully manifest and communicate to him his 
infinite love. 

I see no objection to this doctrine. In the light 



90 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 

of it we can see more clearly the meaning of friend- 
ship, the sacredness of it, and the magnitude of the 
purposes to be accomplished by it. 

The love of God for us, revealed in the incarna- 
tion, is an incomprehensible mystery. The angels 
desire to look into it, but it is as impenetrable to 
them as it is to us. What did God see in us to 
love? What did he behold in us to love so well 
that he was willing to take upon himself human 
flesh, and in human flesh suffer and die for us? 
What have we in common with him, that he should 
desire our friendship and companionship? These 
are problems which baffle all human philosophy. 

But while we can never understand this mystery, 
we know that nothing is more real than the God- 
man's love for us, and that nothing is more real 
than the friendship which exists between him and 
those who trust and obey him. 

Was he not a friend to Lazarus, Martha, and 
Mary — that little family at Bethany, beneath whose 
roof he so often slept? Were they not friends to 
him? Were they not a refuge from care, and a 
solace to his troubled spirit ? 

The same intimate, tender, and sacred relation 
existed between him and his apostles. Mutual 
confidence and affection had brought them so close 
to him that he was constrained to say : " Henceforth 
I call you not servants : for the servant knoweth 



TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 91 

not what his Lord doeth ; but I have called you 
friends, for all things that I have heard of my 
Father I have made known unto you." 

In the light of our Lord's teaching and example 
let us consider what a friend is expected to do. 

1. A friend is expected to give advice. You are 
not bound to accept it, and he has no right to be 
offended if you do not accept it. You should never 
part with the freedom of your own judgment and 
will. To be bound absolutely by the judgment of 
your friend lays on him unlawful responsibility, and 
takes from you the conduct of your own affairs. 

Even if you do not take your friend's advice, 
you may be helped by it. Only to know that an- 
other thinks about our difficulties is helpful. 

Jesus was the only infallible counsellor. His 
infinite wisdom and holiness rendered it impossible 
for him to mislead a friend. The wisest and best 
man in the world is liable to misguide those who 
come to him for counsel. But this fact does not re- 
lieve any man of the obligation to advise his friends 
when serious difficulties arise in their pathway. 
To counsel a fellow-man in some real emergency of 
his life is to assume a painful responsibility, but he 
who refuses to take that responsibility is not a friend. 

2. The man who claims to be your friend is ex- 
pected to be your defender when you need to be 
shielded from wrong. 



92 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 

When the Pharisees dragged an adulterous woman 
into the presence of our Lord and insisted that she 
should be stoned to death according to the law of 
Moses, he instantly threw himself between her and 
her pursuers, and administered to them a rebuke so 
withering that they dropped their heads and went 
away from him. 

" He that is without sin among you, let him first 
cast a stone at her." That was a home thrust, be- 
cause there was not one of them who had not been 
guilty of the very crime for which they would con- 
demn and punish this defenseless woman. 

Christ did not excuse her, nor did he apologize to 
the Pharisees for her shameful conduct, and yet he 
was her friend. Her helpless condition appealed to 
the sympathy and nobleness of his great nature, and 
he promptly responded by putting his own manly 
breast between her and death. 

Such is the degeneracy of our times that thousands 
of men will not defend even the innocent women of 
their own household. In this respect the age of 
knight errantry was incomparably better than our 
own, for then every boy, when he reached the age 
of twelve years, was led to an altar where he took a 
solemn oath to defend, even unto death, the person 
and name of every deserving woman in the circle of 
his acquaintance. 

In our day it is not uncommon to find boys and 



TKUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 93 

men who are too pusillanimous to extend such pro- 
tection to the women of their own homes. Of all 
the criminals in this wicked world, the defamer of 
women is the meanest ; and of all the cowards that 
are permitted to live, the most contemptible is he 
who shrinks from defending an innocent woman 
against the assaults of a villainous traducer. 

To defend your name and reputation is what you 
expect of every man who claims to be your friend. 

A few summers ago, in a watering place in the 
mountains of old Virginia, a company of guests 
were engaged in discussing some of Virginia's pub- 
lic men. One of them, in the heat of debate, made 
an unwarranted assault upon the name of Fitzhugh 
Lee. Instantly another man rose to his feet, and 
said : " Sir, Fitzhugh Lee is present in the person 
of his friend. If he were here in his own person, 
he would resent your malicious falsehood; in his 
absence, I will do for him what he would surely do 
if present." The result was a prompt retraction of 
the false accusation and a humble apology. 

If such courage and fidelity were common — in 
other words, if men everywhere were loyal to the 
obligations of true friendship — the cowardly de- 
famers of the pure and the good would have but few 
opportunities for moral assassination. 

Christ said, " Greater love hath no man than this, 
that a man lay down his life for his friends." 



/T 



94 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 

When he spoke these words, he knew that his pur- 
pose was to lay down his own life for those upon 
whom he had bestowed his love. That purpose he 
fulfilled. 

"He died for us." "He was wounded for our 
transgressions ; he was bruised for our iniquities ; 
and by his stripes we are healed." The sacrifice he 
made for his friends rises to an inconceivable height 
of sublimity above any human sacrifice, because 
there was in it not only the physical pangs of death, 
but all the righteous wrath of an infinitely holy God 
against the sins of the world. 

The example of Christ in making such a sacrifice 
for our redemption shows us what true friendship 
will inspire us to do for those we love when their 
interests and lives are imperiled. 

3. It is expected that the man who professes to 
be your friend will show his appreciation of your 
good qualities and good deeds. Appreciation does 
not express itself in conventional flattery and exag- 
gerated applause. It is simply a fair and candid 
recognition of your real merits. Such appreciation 
of you will impart new vitality to your faculties 
and inspire you with increased heroism in all your 
virtuous undertakings. 

What some persons need more than anything 
else for their development is a candid and just ex- 
pression of appreciation from their friends. They 




TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 95 

need the sort of recognition and encouragement that 
will make them realize their actual worth and 
strengthen them for new and higher endeavors. 

Many years ago I saw a poor country boy stand- 
ing on a platform before a large company of his 
schoolmates, trying to declaim one of the patriotic 
speeches of John Quincy Adams. The boys laughed 
at his awkwardness, and the flushes on his face 
showed that his heart resented their cruelty. When 
he had taken his seat the teacher arose and said : 
" You may laugh at him now, but the day is coming 
when you will rend the air in applauding his 
achievements." That boy never forgot the prophecy 
of his teacher. He determined to fulfill it, and he 
did fulfill it. To-day his fame is national and his 
power is imperial. 

4. You expect of the man who claims to be your 
friend reproof when he beholds you in a course of 
wrong-doing. Jesus had no better friend than 
Peter, and yet he more often rebuked him than any 
other apostle. This is one of the gravest and most 
delicate duties of true friendship. No man attempts 
it without fear and trembling, because he knows 
how unwilling poor human nature is to receive 
reproof. 

Anybody can denounce an enemy, hut it takes a 
hero to rebuke a friend. It is an exceedingly pain- 
ful duty and often results in the loss of the good 



96 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 

will of those to whom the rebuke is administered. 
But if you evade an obligation so important and 
sacred as this, you are not worthy to be called any 
man's friend. 

I believe that all friendships based upon mutual 
confidence and love, and guided and sanctified by 
the verities of God's word, are imperishable. 
Nothing on the earth or above the earth can ever 
destroy them. They will go with us through the 
gates of death. 

I love to think of heaven as the place where 
" those who meet shall part no more, and those long 
parted meet again." In that bright land beyond 
the starry heights, next to the rapture of meeting 
my risen and glorified Saviour will be the joy of re- 
union with those whose friendship has been the 
medicine and solace of my life in this world of 
suffering and sorrow. 

In that radiant company of friends, to whose 
blessed fellowship I hope to ascend when my earthly 
cares and toils have ceased, are many of the men 
and women of Alabama, who were my loving, faith- 
ful counsellors and helpers in the long ago. 

The terrible scourge which is sweeping through 
many communities of my native State, driving 
thousands of her noblest people from their business 
and homes, and consigning many to untimely graves, 
not only brings an aching sorrow to my heart, but 



TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 97 

inspires me with a new and stronger affection for 
those upon whom this calamity has fallen. In 
Mobile, Selina, and Montgomery, where the pesti- 
lence is now doing its deadly work, where homes 
are draped in mourning and thousands of hearts are 
wrung with keen and lonely anguish, the earlier 
years of my ministry were spent. The men and 
women of those communities are my people. Their 
troubles are my troubles, their cares are my cares, 
their sorrows are my sorrows. 

My Alabama friends, let me assure you that in 
this capital city of Tennessee there are thousands of 
good people who cherish for you a generous and 
tender sympathy, who commend you daily to God's 
loving and keeping care, and who stand ready to 
give substantial aid to those who have not been able 
to flee from the destroyer. Be of good cheer ; trust 
in God ; submit meekly to the discipline of his 
hand, and you will find a blessed compensation for 
all your present ills and anguish. 

' ' Weeping may endure for a night, 
But joy cometh in the morning." 

1 ' Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, 
But trust him for his grace.' ' 

In other days and in other places I have been 
your friend. Allow me to be the same friend to 
you now and here. Let me guide your troubled 



98 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 

spirits to a divine Friend, who " sticketh closer than 
a brother," a Friend who is responsive to all your 
sighs and griefs, and whose blessed invitation is, 
" Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest." Let me beguile 
your thoughts from the things that now distress 
you to the beauty and blessedness of that serene 
abode into which our redeemed spirits shall pass 
when life's cares and battles have ceased. On that 
bright shore beyond the inky sea there is no pesti- 
lence, no death, no partings, no tears. There beauty 
smiles eternally and pleasure never dies. 



VII 
OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 



" Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, 
that ye through his poverty might be rich." 2 Cor. 8 : 9. 

The introduction of sin into the world made every 
human being a pauper. Sin separates man from 
God. It prevents intercourse with God. In this 
condition the human soul is in darkness and bond- 
age, and utterly destitute of nourishment and 
comfort. This is poverty a thousand times more 
deplorable and wretched than that which comes to 
our doors in rags. I would rather be as poor as the 
homeless and sore-footed tramp than be a spiritual 
pauper, going through this world of conflict and 
sorrow without God and without hope. 

The infinite Jehovah, maker and ruler of all 
things, saw the poverty of this world and pitied it. 
He was rich, rich in himself, rich in attributes which 
rendered him infinitely higher and more glorious 
than any other being, and rich in having the homage, 
affection, and praise of all the unfallen intelligences 
of the universe. 

99 



100 OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

Moved with pity for our poverty he became poor 
that we might be rich. He became a man, and the 
poorest of men. The foxes had their holes, the 
birds of the air their nests, but he had not where to 
lay his head. He stooped to the position of a 
servant. He came not to be ministered unto, but 
to minister. He was obedient unto death, even the 
death of the cross. 

By this poverty and humiliation he made it 
possible for us to be rich and glorious. By faith in 
him we become heirs of God and joint heirs with 
Jesus Christ to an inheritance that is undefiled, in- 
corruptible, and that fadeth not away. 

In this scheme of recovering mercy we see the 
highest possible exhibition of unselfishness. He 
enriched the world by the sublimest self-denial that 
man or angel ever witnessed. We avail ourselves 
of the benefits of his sacrifice by imitating his 
example. " If any man will come after me, let him 
deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." 
" If we suffer, we shall also reign with him." 

As he loved us, so we are to love one another. 
As he came into the world and lived and suffered 
and died for us, so we are to live and suffer, and, if 
need be, die for one another. "Look not every 
man on his own things, but every man also on the 
things of others." " Bear ye one another's burdens, 
and so fulfill the law of Christ." 



OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 101 

The spirit which prompted Cain to ask the ques- 
tion, " Am I my brother's keeper ? " is the spirit of 
Antichrist. It is the spirit which says, " Let every 
man take care of himself." It is the spirit which 
inspires a man to labor solely for his own advance- 
ment. It is the spirit which instigates all injustice, 
oppression, and cruelty. It is behind all man's in- 
humanity to man. It arrays neighbor against 
neighbor, class against class, community against 
community, and nation against nation. 

That spirit dominates the age in which we live. 
It threatens this great nation with the crisis of the 
centuries. If there is not a reaction in the near 
future, it will culminate in such a social upheaval 
as the world has never seen. The voices of its 
millions of victims are calling to heaven, as the 
blood of the murdered Abel cried from the ground 
for divine vengeance upon Cain. 

The power which propels the wheels of our 
present civilization is not love, but greed. In poli- 
tics and commerce there is a premium on shrewd- 
ness and deception, while honesty and generosity 
are sneered at as virtues too sublimated and ethereal 
to be practised by creatures who wear earth about 
them, and who have to grapple with such problems 
as, "What shall I eat? and what shall I drink? 
and wherewithal shall I be clothed ? " 

A civilization that is based on selfishness, and 



102 OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

that magnifies and rewards men who succeed by their 
superior cunning, has no power within itself to 
secure justice. 

There is nothing that needs saving so much as 
a civilization that is guided by no moral principle, 
and that marches on without regard to God and his 
righteousness. The country that boasts of such a 
civilization is on the highroad to anarchy and bar- 
barism. 

Civilization is not a cause, but an effect. It is 
the product of character. It expresses the good and 
evil in the hearts of the people. Any government — 
national, State, or municipal — is just what the 
people make it. If a government tolerates such an 
iniquity as a bull fight, or a gambling house, or a 
bar-room, it is because the people are depraved 
enough to want such things. 

The fountain of any civilization is in the moral 
character of the people who support it. If it is 
corrupt, it is because the people are corrupt, and it 
can be cleansed only by cleansing the people. The 
passage of more stringent laws will not stop the 
abominations to which I have referred. As long as 
the people do not rebel against indecent theatrical 
exhibitions they will continue to occur in all our 
theatres. As long as the people make no protest 
against obscene papers they will continue to be sold 
on our highways and at our news-stands. 



OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 103 

We have already laws against these things. 
Why are they not enforced? Because the moral 
sentiment of the people is too weak to demand it. 
As long as the people are morally stupid, as long as 
they have but a feeble appreciation of the distinc- 
tions which God makes between right and wrong, 
vulgarity, uncleanness, and knavery will go un- 
whipped of justice. As long as the people are 
unjust there will be class legislation, despotic 
monopolies, political rings, bribery, and ballot-box 
stuffing. A righteous civilization can be established 
and maintained only by a people who love and 
practise righteousness. 

We are like those foolish Galatians to whom Paul 
said, " Ye are bewitched." We have been bewitched 
by political teachers who have made us believe that 
the cure for all our social troubles is wiser legisla- 
tion. Each of them has his economic theory and 
tells us that if we will send him to Congress, and 
he can get his theory transmuted into law, he will 
put an end to our social woes. 

He may be sincere, but his proposition is absurd. 
Economic legislation deals only with things that 
are external to man's being. That is not what is 
needed. We need something that will touch the 
souls and transform the characters of our people. 

The State does not make the people, the people 
make the State. The State is the expression of the 



104 OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

thought of the people. It is the product of the 
people's faith. It is the realization of their moral 
ideas. 

When the people are personally honest, the State 
will be honest; when the people love justice, the 
State will be just ; when the people abhor oppres- 
sion, then oppressive legislation will be obliterated 
from our statute books. When the people are right- 
eous enough to demand it, we shall have a faithful 
administration of every righteous law in our civil 
code. Good laws cannot be executed among a cor- 
rupt people. 

Not long ago I read a very learned and beautiful 
oration on the old Koman law. The principles em- 
bodied in that great system of law emanated from a 
few great men. They did not come from the body 
of the Roman people. Those laws were in exist- 
ence during all that dark period when the Roman 
government gave but little protection to life, liberty, 
and property. 

Alfred the Great incorporated the Ten Command- 
ments and the Golden Rule in the English constitu- 
tion, but they have been openly violated by every 
administration of the English government from 
King Alfred to Queen Victoria. 

A great writer on sociology has said that : " Laws 
written on tables of stone and printed in statute 
books are but the playthings of politicians, if they 



OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 105 

are not written in the hearts of the people. Laws 
cannot make men unselfish ; police righteousness is 
not divine righteousness ; the State cannot establish 
justice and righteousness on the earth. But justice 
and righteousness must establish the State." 

What then is our hope ? How can society be ren- 
ovated? How can our civilization be purified? 
How can the State be so reconstructed as to furnish 
adequate protection to its subjects and all of their 
legitimate interests ? 

My answer to each of these questions is, By sub- 
stituting for the law of self-interest, which now 
rules our social life, the law of self-sacrifice, the law 
by which God acts, the law which he illustrated 
when he became poor that we through his poverty 
might be rich. 

The cross of Christ is the solvent of all the great 
social problems of the world. There God unveils 
his heart to men ; there he reveals his redeeming 
love, a love which expresses itself in absolute self- 
renunciation. " He who knew no sin, was made sin 
for us." " He bore our sins in his own body on the 
tree." " He died for us." " He was wounded for 
our transgressions ; he was bruised for our iniqui- 
ties, . . and by his stripes we are healed." 

In that complete oblation of himself God teaches 
us that the highest expression of love is self-sacri- 
fice, and that it is only by the sacrifice of ourselves 



106 OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

that we can touch and supply the world's pro- 
foundest needs. The human race has never ad- 
vanced one inch without human sacrifices. In 
every past age the men who pushed the world on 
and up to something better were martyrs. They 
suffered persecution, and in many instances death, 
for what they did for righteousness' sake. 

Every great truth has secured public recognition 
only through the self-denials and heartaches of some 
moral hero. The world's darkness has been il- 
lumined only by the blaze of martyr-fires. What 
we have and enjoy to-day is the blood-bought wealth 
of the centuries. We can never pay to the genera- 
tions that come after us more than an infinitesimal 
part of the debt which we owe to the generations 
that have preceded us. Any future progress must 
be secured by obedience to the same law, the law 
of self-sacrifice. Every inch must be gained and 
held by some struggling, suffering, unresting brain 
and heart. 

My friend, is it the purpose of your life to be use- 
ful? If that is not your purpose and your domi- 
nant purpose, you have no claims upon the homage 
of the world. If you intend to be a disciple of Cain 
and repudiate all obligation to care for your brother 
man, you deserve to be treated as Cain was — branded 
as an outlaw. If you will not be your brother's 
keeper and burden-bearer, you are his enemy. You 



OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 107 

will seize every opportunity to defraud, oppress, and 
degrade him. The principle which controls you 
will make you a monopolist, or a gambler, or a 
bank-robber, or an anarchist, or a nihilist. 

But, if your purpose is to be useful — useful not 
only to yourself and your own family, but to the 
world — your life must be a sacrificial life. You 
must look out on this wide world and recognize 
every man in it as your brother and acknowledge 
your obligation to help him, as far as God gives you 
the ability and the opportunity. To serve your day 
and generation according to the will of God, to 
make any substantial and enduring contribution to 
the welfare of the race, you must make an oblation 
of your possessions and of yourself. 

My brother, you sing, 

" In the cross of Christ I glory, 
Towering o'er the wrecks of time," 

but do you understand what you sing? Do you 
know the meaning of the cross ? The cross does not 
release you from the law of sacrifice, but binds you 
to it by considerations that are immeasurable in 
their importance and solemnity. You must not only 
be reconciled to the cross, but reconciled to the law 
which it proclaims and to all the burden of toil, 
struggle, and sacrifice which it lays upon you. 
The cross is not only the symbol of Christ's bur- 



108 OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

den, but also of your own. You glory in the cross 
he bore, but do you glory in the cross which he of- 
fers you ? If your heart is throbbing with the pas- 
sion that burned in him who hung upon that instru- 
ment of shame, your life will be in some degree a 
repetition of what he endured, and your favorite 
sentiment will be : 

Must Jesus bear the cross alone, 

And all the world go free ? 
No ! There's a cross for every one, 

And there's a cross for me. 

The consecrated cross I'll bear 

Till death shall set me free ; 
And then go home, my crown to wear, 

For there's a crown for me. 

" Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he be- 
came poor, that ye through his poverty might be 
rich." This text should have a larger application 
to men of wealth than to the poorer classes, because 
they have larger possessions and more abundant 
opportunities for sacrifice. The rich men in the 
churches of this country have it within their power 
to solve our problems and save us from the fearful 
disasters which so seriously threaten us. Let these 
rich men become truly Christlike — let them become 
living sacrifices in the service of their God and 
country and race, and our clouds will disappear. 



OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 109 

Jesus was no more under obligation to give him- 
self wholly to the task of saving men than the 
Christian capitalist of Nashville is to consecrate 
himself and his possessions to the same work. God 
had no more claims to the service of Christ than he 
has to the time, talents, and labors of every Chris- 
tian lawyer of this city. 

The manufacturer has no more right to operate 
his factory solely for his own benefit than Jesus 
Christ had to work miracles for his own profit. 
The Christian has no more moral right to an uncon- 
secrated business or capital, than Christ had to an 
unconsecrated cross. 

Whenever the business men in our churches 
heartily accept this doctrine and conform their lives 
to it, we shall see Christianity grow as it never has 
grown. We shall see society quickly cleansed of 
its present abominations. We shall see the State 
purged of all favoritism and injustice ; we shall see 
the strifes between capital and labor cease, and 
throughout all our borders a reign of righteousness, 
contentment, and prosperity. 

God is calling to-day for men of capital who are 
willing to be financially crucified in order to estab- 
lish the business of the world on the basis of the 
Golden Rule : " Whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them." 

In putting your own business upon that basis 



110 OUK SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

you may suffer great loss for a time, your profits 
may be enormously decreased, it may even bankrupt 
you ; but in making the sacrifice you will gain the 
fellowship of Christ, you will manifest his spirit, 
magnify his truth, and extend the conquests of his 
kingdom. If every Christian man in business would 
do this the whole commercial world would be revo- 
lutionized and established upon principles that would 
insure steady and permanent prosperity to all classes 
of every community. 

The world has never been more prolific of golden 
opportunities for Christlike deeds than it is to-day. 
You can make the counting room as sacred as the 
sanctuary. You can make the legislative hall as 
hallowed as the mount on which Moses talked with 
God and received the law on tables of stone. You 
can make every gathering of the people, whether for 
religious, educational, political, or commercial pur- 
poses, as holy, harmonious, and happy as the dis- 
ciples were on the mount of transfiguration. You 
can convert the din and roar of your industrial 
activity into a perpetual coronation hymn. You 
can be the knights of a nobler and grander chivalry 
than ever unfurled a flag or unsheathed a sword on 
any of the world's historic battlefields. 



VIII 

PAUL'S REPROBATION OF IDLE- 
NESS 



"We commanded you that if any would not work, neither 
should he eat." 2 Thess. 3 : 10. 

The Apostle Paul was an indefatigable laborer. 
In this respect he made himself an example unto 
others. While he preached the gospel among the 
Thessalonians he supported himself by his own 
manual labor that he might emphasize the obliga- 
tion upon every man to be industrious. 

He regarded idleness, whether physical, mental, 
or spiritual, as ignoble and disgraceful. So thor- 
oughly and intensely did he reprobate it that he 
published an apostolic edict that Christians should 
not feed those who refused to work. Paul wrote 
this commandment by divine inspiration, and we 
should regard it as an expression of God's will. 

God, himself, is the greatest worker in the uni- 
verse. I sometimes wish that the veil of nature 
could be lifted that we might see the Eternal Father 
at his work, busy throughout all space, slighting 

ill 



112 paul's reprobation of idleness 

nothing, exercising his wisdom and power where- 
ever a star floats or an ocean rolls or a lily blooms. 

We speak of the power of the sun, and how it 
made the forests which stood millions of years ago ; 
how these forests were crushed by natural forces 
into beds of coal ; and how the heat of the sun made 
all the verdure and beauty which bedeck the globe 
to-day. But the sun explains nothing. It simply 
tells us that there is a mind somewhere which makes 
the universe tremble with life and array itself in 
magnificent loveliness. 

Could we look back of the ocean, we should see 
some hand holding it and hear some voice saying, 
" Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther." Could 
we gaze back of the approaching cloud, we should 
see some loving heart pouring out great streams of 
color in the west. Notwithstanding the mystery of 
the universe, one thing is clear : it is doing its work 
under the guidance and loving care of some great 
Being of infinite wisdom and power. It is he who 
supplies the burning fountains of the sun ; it is he 
who pilots the stars ; it is he who paints the vernal 
blossoms and carries perfume to the summer rose. 

God, who is never idle, will not tolerate idleness 
in creatures made in his own image. Work is life. 
Man is dormant until he begins to labor. An idle, 
lazy person, is brainless, for sleepy brains are not a 
positive quantity. 



paul's reprobation of idleness 113 

Work is not simply doing, but being. When Sir 
John Lubbock was traveling among the South Sea 
natives, he found them so averse to any kind of ac- 
tivity that they did not care to talk upon new sub- 
jects. They had been asleep so many generations 
that the discussion of a new idea was painful to 
them, and Lubbock's happiness was their misery. 

Mere existence is not life, and life is not measured 
by days and months and years. Activity is life. 
We live in thoughts and deeds, and he lives most 
who thinks most and does most. 

Sometimes in naming the reasons why certain 
persons attend Sunday worship so seldom, the prin- 
cipal one, intellectual and spiritual indolence, is 
omitted. Such people know that if they go where 
an earnest and intelligent man expounds and ap- 
plies the living word of the living God, they will be 
provoked to think, and probably to act, and the pros- 
pect of coming out of their intellectual and spiritual 
torpor is very painful to them. 

On a recent tour through Florida I had an oppor- 
tunity of studying the characteristics of the turtle 
and the alligator. All they seem to care for is 
existence. They move only when they are com- 
pelled to move. They aspire to no higher blessed- 
ness than that which they find in lying on a sand- 
bank and sleeping in a sun-bath. For no better 
reason some people will not put themselves within 

H 



114 paul's reprobation of idleness 

reach of the living ministry. They are afraid of 
the risk of being shaken out of their moral indo- 
lence. They covet nothing better than the bliss of 
spiritual torpidity. 

" In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread/' 
is a law under which God has placed the whole 
world of mankind. Upon obedience to this law he 
has conditioned the welfare of the family, the stabil- 
ity of the State, the peace of society, and the pros- 
perity and glory of the church. The disorders and 
miseries that afflict the world come from men's dis- 
regard of this primal law. I am confident that I 
do not exaggerate when I say that the world's huge 
and costly machinery of charitable relief, all our 
vast and expensive system of correction and punish- 
ment, our large police force, the oppressive taxation 
to which we are subjected, and the high prices which 
we pay for what we eat and drink and wear — may 
be traced to the prevalence of idleness, to the indis- 
position of thousands of men and women to bear 
their just proportion of the burden of labor which 
needs to be performed. 

There is a definite weight of obligation overhang- 
ing every human life. If that obligation is not 
borne by the life to which it belongs, it must fall 
on other lives. When a man who belongs to some 
commercial, or political, or benevolent organization, 
refuses to do his part in supporting it, he thereby 



PAUl/s REPROBATION OF IDLENESS 115 

increases the burden of every true and loyal mem- 
ber of that institution. Who are the vagrants, dead- 
beats, and criminals, that vast army of non-producers 
everywhere visible? They are the men and women 
who have repudiated God's primal law, quit the 
ranks of honest toilers, and left their burdens to be 
carried by other people. 

How successful and happy the home in which 
there is a wise and equitable distribution of respon- 
sibility, care, and labor ! Where father, mother, 
sons > and daughters, take counsel of each other and 
agree upon a well-defined plan of life for the house- 
hold, and where each performs with patience, fidelity, 
and cheerfulness the part assigned to him, and is as 
intent upon promoting the welfare of others as he 
is upon his own pleasure and advancement — there is 
a prosperous and happy family. 

But how clouded, inharmonious, and unlovely the 
home where there is no such agreement, no just dis- 
tribution of labor, and one or two are struggling 
beneath the burdens of all. In many families there 
are vagrants who submit to no law, idlers who lift 
no load, insubordinates who recognize no authority 
and discharge no duty. These make wretchedness 
for all the household. 

The world is cursed to-day with drones and cow- 
ards, who shirk their burdens and stand aloof from 
their places in the alignment of human service. 



116 paul's reprobation of idleness 

Such persons not only multiply the cares and labors 
of others, but restrict their own freedom and in- 
crease their own misery. Disowning their obliga- 
tion to perform any part in the conflicts and toils 
incident to social life, they soon learn that such a 
policy of existence leads neither to happiness nor 
freedom. 

Who are the men that vociferate most against the 
order of society ? They are the men who have found 
out by sad experience that they cannot be idlers and 
obstructionists without bringing down upon their 
heads the just penalties of the laws which society 
has enacted for its government and protection. The 
moonshiners, the counterfeiters, the bank-robbers, and 
the gamblers, belong to the class which anathema- 
tizes government. They curse it because it inter- 
poses its authority and power to prohibit them from 
pursuing lives that not only are worthless to society, 
but multiply its burdens and woes. 

There are some applications of this subject which 
are easily discernible by any thoughtful mind. 
There is a great work to be done ; there are great 
battles to be fought and great burdens to be borne 
for the needy world in which we live; and this 
work can be done successfully and speedily only 
when all whose duty it is to help, step into line with 
an honest purpose to meet their share of obligation. 

No informed man doubts that certain reforms are 



paul's reprobation of idleness 117 

needed in the government of this country. There 
are bad laws on our statute books which enrich and 
exalt one class of our people and impoverish and 
oppress another class ; and these laws breed discon- 
tent, insubordination, and crime. These iniquitous 
statutes exist and operate from year to year and 
from decade to decade, not because a majority of 
the people are in favor of them, but because so few 
of them are disposed to accept their share of the 
conflict and labor needed to wipe out such unright- 
eous legislation. They are afraid of the political 
henchmen and the subsidized newspaper men who 
are interested in the preservation of these unjust 
laws. 

In many of our Southern States we are confronted 
by a reign of mob law. Men suspected of crime 
are taken out of the hands of civil government and 
put to death in the most barbarous and brutal 
manner. In the keeping of sheriffs and constables, 
and even in the presence of judges engaged in the 
investigation of the charges preferred against them, 
they are clubbed into insensibility or perforated with 
bullets. The men who constitute these mobs defy 
government and go unwhipped of justice. They are 
able to do this, not because a majority of the people 
sympathize with their conduct and favor the admin- 
istration of mob law, but because so few are willing 
to burden themselves with the trouble of bringing 



118 paul's reprobation of idleness 

these offenders to the bar of justice and demanding 
of the courts the infliction of the punishment which 
they so richly deserve. 

If the brutal South Carolina mob which recently 
slaughtered a Negro and his household for no other 
offense than his acceptance of a postmastership from 
the Federal goverment, is not duly punished for the 
crime of murder, then South Carolina's civilization 
is a failure and her boasted manhood is a sham. If 
the present generation of Tennesseeans will not rise 
up and demand the just punishment of similar law- 
lessness in their own commonwealth, their blood is 
degenerate, and they are unworthy to claim kinship 
with the sturdy men who made the administration 
of Andrew Jackson a terror to evildoers. 

A vast majority of the people of this city are op- 
posed to gamblers and gambling institutions, and 
yet the current opinion is that Nashville is under a 
reign of gamblers. They prosecute their nefarious 
vocation in utter defiance of law and public senti- 
ment. Why are they able to do this? For the 
simple reason that the people do not rise up in their 
majesty and demand of those charged with the ad- 
ministration of law the punishment and expulsion 
of this infamous combination of criminals and crimi- 
nal-makers. 

In every community there are hundreds of unfor- 
tunate men, women, and children who need relief 



paul/s reprobation of idleness 119 

and whose condition is not provided for by any gov- 
ernmental system of help. This is a burden upon 
the community that could be easily borne if every 
person whose duty it is to help would bear his part. 
It weighs heavily upon some because the selfishness 
of many prevents an equitable distribution of it. 

There is a certain weight of obligation upon every 
local congregation of believers in the Lord Jesus 
Christ. A definite amount of money must be raised 
for the support of their own worship, and for the 
relief of their own destitute and suffering members. 
In addition to this, money is needed to support 
missions, both at home and abroad ; and another 
large sum is required for the support of schools in 
which young men are being trained for the solemn 
duties of the gospel ministry. 

There is a vast amount of work to be done in the 
Sunday-schools. Fathers and mothers send their 
children there to be instructed in the wisdom of 
God. This requires an army of men and women 
who have the grace and industry and patience to 
study and teach. It requires also a large force to 
operate our city mission stations, and to perform 
the work of religious visitation from house to house. 

It is the large dormant element in every church 
that renders it so difficult to compass all of the obli- 
gations imposed by divine authority upon a con- 
gregation of believers. It is the refusal of so many 



120 paul's reprobation of idleness 

to bear their just proportion of the burden that 
makes it so heavy upon the shoulders of those who 
are willing to do their duty. 

If there is one principle which a thoughtful, self- 
respecting, Christ-loving church-member should em- 
phasize more than another, it is that no other mem- 
ber shall be allowed to bear the burdens which 
belong to him. He should stand up and manfully 
claim it as his sacred right and privilege to pay his 
just proportion of the money and to do his just 
proportion of the work required for the furtherance 
of the Lord's cause. 

What shall I say of those who, convinced of the 
truth of the Christian religion and that the world's 
civilization is pivoted upon it, refuse to bow their 
necks to the yoke of Christ ? There are men and 
women of this class before me this morning. To 
these I would submit a few questions. How can 
you reconcile your present attitude toward Christ's 
cause with your conceptions of right, obligation, 
honor, and self-respect? Is it not as truly your 
duty as mine to serve God? Has not the Son of 
God, who died for the sins of the whole world, done 
as much for you as he has for me ? If the highest 
good of humanity depends upon the prevalence and 
maintenance of Christianity, upon what principle 
of ethics can you excuse yourself from giving your 
name, your example, and your resources to the sup- 



paul ? s reprobation of idleness 121 

port of its sacred cause? In your heart you wish 
success to that cause; but is it just/ is it noble, is it 
honorable in you to stand aloof and take no part in 
the toil and conflict by which Christ's kingdom is 
advanced ? 

If you believe in an equitable distribution of the 
burdens of society, if you believe that in the great 
work of improving the world every virtue-loving 
and humanity-loving man should do his part, if 
you believe that the progress of the world and the 
highest welfare of men, both for time and eternity, de- 
pend upon the regenerating and conserving influences 
of Christian truth, how can you honestly claim to 
be a friend to either God or man while you refuse 
to give to the gospel the support of your own name 
and example? How can you satisfy your con- 
science, or even respect your own manhood, while 
you permit others to bear the burdens which legiti- 
mately belong to you ? 

" Why stand ye here all the day idle ? " Some 
of you are in the evening of life. Your sun will 
soon set on a world which so far it has failed to 
bless. We appeal to you by every motive that can 
be drawn from the past, the present, and the future, 
from time and eternity, from the great God and the 
solemnities of approaching judgment, to make the 
most of the little hour that remains. Put into that 
hour a sincere repentance for your sins, a true and 



122 paul's reprobation of idleness 

living faith in him who died to make atonement for 
your sins, and the consecration of all you have and 
are to the work of promoting the salvation of your 
fellow-men. 

How delightful to contemplate the sequel of a 
life that has been well spent, a life that has done 
its legitimate work and accomplished its divinely 
prescribed mission ! 

It gives us real pleasure and satisfaction to look 
upon something that is complete. We love to be- 
hold a picture in which the artist has slighted noth- 
ing. We are charmed by a speech replete with 
thought, truth, beauty, and eloquence from the first 
sentence of the exordium to the closing sentence of 
the peroration. 

When we read a poem like Gray's " Elegy/' or 
Tennyson's "In Memoriam," or Virgil's "iEneid," 
or Homer's "Iliad," we feel that its thoughts, 
words, and rhythm have all come through the hand 
of the finisher and that the work is complete. But 
how much more delightful to contemplate a finished 
life, a life which illustrates all the virtues that can 
adorn and dignify human character, a life full of 
useful service to God and man, a life that dis- 
appears like the sun at evening, followed by the 
benedictions of a grateful world, a life which angels 
applaud and over whose record God himself is heard 
to say, " Well done, good and faithful servant." 



IX 
RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 



" Blessed be . . . the God of all comfort, who comforteth 
us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort 
them which are in any trouble." 2 Cor. 1 : 3, 4. 

These are the words of the most thoroughly 
poised and symmetrically developed man, save One, 
the world has ever seen. The human heart has 
never cherished a nobler and holier feeling than that 
to which he here gives utterance. He thanks God 
for comforts which he had received in great trials — 
thanks him, not so much for the relief which they 
gave him, as for the new strength which they im- 
parted to him for the comforting of others in dis- 
tress. He gloried in his tribulations, because in 
them he had experiences of God's presence and 
power which enlarged his capacity for instructing, 
comforting, and strengthening other men, and es- 
pecially other Christians. 

To covet gifts for the use we can make of them 
in promoting the world's welfare is the best proof of 
a regenerated heart and a Christlike character. So 

123 



124 RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 

much more did this man Paul love others than him- 
self, that he was willing to be accursed from God if 
by bearing a divine malediction he might save the 
apostate Jewish people. 

Blessed is the man to whom God has given the 
secret of rejoicing even in tribulation. Blessed is 
the man who can see and enjoy at all times what is 
good in the world, and who can transmute what is 
evil in itself into elements of strength and happiness. 
It is the condition of a man's heart that makes the 
world what it is to him. He sees things as he is. 

The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 

I sometimes meet a person to whom the world is 
a great picture gallery. Wherever he turns his 
vision he beholds a panorama of bewitching beauty. 
If you should pluck out his eyes it would not de- 
stroy his happiness, because his heart is full of bright 
and beautiful pictures. The conditions of happiness 
are not without but within him. This fact gives 
him the mastery of his environment and makes all 
things contribute to his felicity. 

I suppose you have not forgotten the fable of the 
firebrand and the lamp. One day they went out to 
see what they could find. The firebrand came back 
and wrote in its journal : " The whole world is very 
dark." When the lamp returned it made this entry 



KECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 125 

in its journal : "I did not find any darkness in all 
my journey ; it was bright everywhere." The ex- 
planation of this difference between the observation 
of the firebrand and that of the lamp is, that the 
latter carried a light and the former did not. 

Every man in going through the world will find 
just what he takes with him. If he takes darkness 
he will find darkness, and if he takes light he will 
find light. If there is beauty in his soul he will 
find beauty in every spot and in every object on 
which his eye rests. If he is selfish and mean he 
will find selfishness and meanness everywhere. If 
he has a heart whose sympathies embrace the whole 
world, he will find a kindly sympathy and a sweet 
charity greeting him in every community that he 
enters. 

Two men came from a distant city to visit our 
Tennessee Centennial Exposition. When they re- 
turned to their homes each gave his impressions of 
the " White City." One said, " Oh, it's a big show 
and big crowds go to see it, but I got very tired of 
it." The other, with a feeling akin to rapture, ex- 
pressed his appreciation of everything that he saw. 
He described every building and the exhibits which 
it contained. When he spoke of the Parthenon — an 
exact reproduction of the original — and of its beauti- 
ful specimens of painting and sculpture, the crea- 
tions of the world's best genius, his eye flashed 



126 RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 

with the inspiration of his theme. He passed rapidly 
from wonder to wonder of the great pageant, and 
concluded with a description of the music, which he 
declared to be so sublimating in its influence that 
he could scarcely tell " whether he was in the body 
or out of the body.'' One of these men had appropri- 
ated nothing. The other had absorbed everything. 
The great scene was photographed in all its beauty 
on his inner being, and there it will remain to be 
studied and enjoyed through all the days of his 
coming life. 

If a man has music in his soul, he hears music 
everywhere. Some men can walk through a forest 
on a May morning and find more inspiration in lis- 
tening to the warbling of the birds than some other 
men would get from the grandest music that human 
voices can make. 

Give me the man who sees and enjoys all the 
good in his earthly allotment. Give me communion 
with the soul that extracts honey from every flower 
that blossoms along its homeward journey. Give 
me for a friend and companion the man who finds 
nuggets of gold in the rocks over which his feet 
stumble. Give me for a counselor and guide the 
man who beholds objects of beauty and loveliness 
all along the pathway of toil and conflict. Give me 
for a fellow-traveler in life's pilgrimage the man 
who finds that, 



RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 127 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods ; 

There is a rapture on the lonely shore ; 
There is society, where none intrudes, 

By the deep sea, and music in its roar. 

Give me for a comforter in distress the man who 
sees angels in the disguises of earth, and gets a bless- 
ing from them ere they spread their radiant wings 
for homeward flight. 

There is a great building in Europe, whose dome 
is so shaped that sounds uttered beneath it come 
back in a delightful response of melodious music. 
Even a discord is converted into harmony as it floats 
up into the resonant vault and returns to the ear. 

Such a" dome hung over the soul of that grand 
old apostle who said : " I have learned, in whatso- 
ever state I am, therewith to be content," and who, 
while incarcerated in a Roman dungeon and stained 
with the blood of his own lacerated flesh, sang 
praises to God. Beneath that dome, visible only to 
the eye of faith, Paul's groans and lamentations 
were converted into anthems, and every discordant 
sound was transmuted into sweetest harmony. 

What are the causes of your discontent and un- 
happiness? You think that if you had more 
money, more distinction, and more power, the 
trouble would be cured. You are under a delusion, 
a Satanic delusion. The causes of your discontent 
are not in your circumstances, but in yourself. Let 



128 RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 

God into your soul, let him be your constant guest, 
and you will easily master your circumstances. Let 
the glory of his love shine through your sorrows, 
and they will be converted into joys. Get a sweet 
song in your heart, and melody will fill all the air 
about you. Even the wailing storm will make 
soothing and restful music to your troubled spirit. 

Get God's beauty into your soul and you will see 
beauty everywhere, in the heavens above and in the 
earth beneath. Get God's peace into your life, and 
you will find peace all along your journey to the 
skies. Put yourself by faith in such relations with 
Jesus Christ that he will be " all the day long your 
joy and your song/' and then, like Paul, you will 
bless God even in adversity and extract comfort 
even from the bitterest tribulation. 

My second remark is upon the nobility of the 
man who uses every divine blessing bestowed upon 
him in blessing his needy fellow-men. 

Paul sought comfort from God that he might use 
it in comforting his brethren. The bed-rock prin- 
ciple of Christianity binds us to live for the welfare 
of others. Christ came " not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister," and he taught his disciples that in 
the judgment of the last day he would measure their 
fidelity to him by what they had done in caring for 
the poor and sick and distressed of this world. 

In that great day he will say to those upon the 



RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 129 

right hand of his throne : " I was a hungered, and 
ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me 
drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; naked, 
and ye clothed me ; I was sick, and ye visited me ; 
I was in prison, and ye came unto me/' And when 
in amazement they reply, " Lord, when saw we thee 
a hungered, and fed thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee 
drink ? when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee 
in? or naked, and clothed thee? or when saw we 
thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?" he 
will say, " Ah, you did not know it, but every time 
you fed a hungry pauper, or gave a cup of water to 
a thirsty pilgrim, or cared for an orphan, or nursed 
a sick neighbor, or comforted a prisoner, or opened 
your door to a stranger, you ministered unto me." 

I endorse the sentiment of a distinguished Chris- 
tian writer, who says : u The incense which God 
loves best is not that which is burned in a golden 
censer and wastes its perfume on the air, but that 
which is burned in the habitations of the needy, to 
cheer some human weariness, or comfort some hu- 
man sorrow." 

My brethren, I seriously fear that many of you 
are under the fatal delusion that you are doing the 
vital thing in religion and meeting your obligations 
to God by simply coming to a religious service in 
this sanctuary on the Lord's Day. Some of you 
seem to be utterly blind to the truth, that our Sab- 



130 RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 

bath worship here is only preparation for the real 
work of religion. Oh, that God would give me 
power to strike the scales from your eyes ! 

Your divinely appointed task lies not within 
these sanctuary walls, but outside of them. Your 
real battles for God and his cause must be fought, 
not within this sacred enclosure, but out yonder in 
the great wailing world of sin and suffering. 

Abou Ben Adhem awoke one night from a dream 
of peace, and saw, by the moonlight in his room, 
an angel writing in a book of gold. He asked, 
" What writest thou ? " The angel answered, " The 
names of those who love the Lord." "Is mine 
there?" "Nay," replied the angel. Then Abou 
softly but cheerily said, " I pray thee, then, write 
me as one who loves his fellow-men." The next 
night the vision came again, disclosing the names of 
those who loved the Lord ; and lo ! Ben Adhem' s 
name led all the rest. The obvious meaning of this 
legend is, that we love God when we love and serve 
our fellow-men. 

Lying out on the very surface of revealed religion 
is the great truth that God enriches no man, tempo- 
rally or spiritually, without laying upon him at the 
same time the obligation to use the blessings be- 
stowed on him in supplying the needs of other men. 

My brother, why has God given you material 
wealth? Why does he prosper you in business, 



RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 131 

and permit you year after year to add to your al- 
ready ample fortune? That you may live in a 
mansion, fare sumptuously every day, move in a 
fashionable circle, and be courted and flattered by a 
fawning world? If this is your interpretation of 
God's goodness to you, you are worse than blind, 
and need conversion from an error that is mischiev- 
ous and ruinous in the last degree. 

You are simply God's steward. Your money is 
God's money. If you squander it in the gratifica- 
tion of unholy pride and ambition, you rob God, 
defraud the world, and doom yourself to incurable 
wretchedness. 

What is true in this respect of material wealth is 
equally true of knowledge. Knowledge is a talent 
which God requires us to use, not for our own 
pleasure and aggrandizement, but for the elevation 
and happiness of those who are inferior to us in in- 
tellectual attainment. 

There is a Baptist church in one of our Western 
cities which has among its members a distinguished 
gentleman who is a specialist in the English classics. 
He is regarded as very high authority in that de- 
partment of learning. That man has organized all 
the young people of his church and congregation 
into a class for the study of English literature. He 
gives one evening of every week to this work. He 
receives no pecuniary compensation for the service. 



132 EECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 

His Christian zeal is as fervent as his learning is 
profound. His unselfish use of his intellectual cul- 
ture has given him great religious influence over 
the young people of that community, and when he 
comes before his Bible class, on Sunday morning, he 
finds there the young men and the young women of 
his literary class, eager and impatient to hear him 
expound the word of God. 

Paul thanked God for the comfort bestowed upon 
him, because it increased his power to comfort his 
afflicted brethren. It was a great thing to feel the 
warmth of God's love permeating his own heart, 
and the benediction of God's peace settling upon his 
own soul ; but the joy of this experience was almost 
forgotten in the greater gladness of knowing that he 
had gained new power for comforting and cheering 
the hearts of his fellow-toilers and fellow-sufferers. 
O Paul, noble, Christlike Paul ! there is no place in 
human admiration and affection that is too high 
for thee. Thou didst call thyself "less than the 
least of all saints/' but we are persuaded that of all 
the jeweled crowns in heaven, thine is the brightest, 
save one. 

Peter, overcome by fear, denied his Lord, and 
thus brought upon himself disgrace and anguish. 
Foreseeing that he would repent and be forgiven, 
Jesus said to him, u When thou art converted, 
strengthen thy brethren." By this he meant that 



RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 133 

Peter, in going through the pangs of remorse, and 
in finding forgiveness for his terrible sin, would 
learn lessons that would be very helpful to his 
brethren, both in resisting temptation and in recov- 
ering from sinful mistakes. 

Who doubts that Peter did strengthen his brethren 
when the joy of salvation was restored to him. I 
sometimes imagine that I see him standing in a 
group of his fellow-Christians, and that I hear him 
saying : " Brethren, let no man among you follow 
my example by denying the Master, because such 
moral dastardy is a crime against the best being 
that ever breathed the atmosphere of earth, and be- 
cause it will bring upon him an indescribable spir- 
itual darkness and anguish. Save yourselves from 
such an affliction, by standing up bravely for your 
Lord in the face of every difficulty and danger. 
But if, through the weakness of the flesh, any of 
you should, like me, fail and fall away, do not de- 
spair ; do not follow the example of poor Judas ; do 
not let your remorse drive you to madness and self- 
destruction ; but remember that the Master still 
loves you and intercedes for you, and that if you 
will only return to him and fall at his feet, he will 
lift you up, enfold you in the arms of his love, be- 
stow upon you his forgiving grace, and breathe upon 
your troubled spirits the benediction of his unspeak- 
able peace." 



134 RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 

David fell, and when he fell, darkness covered 
him and peace forsook him. But he still believed 
in God's recovering mercy, and in the midst of his 
deepest distress, he prayed : " Restore unto me the 
joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free 
Spirit; then will I teach transgressors thy ways, 
and sinners shall be converted unto thee." 

Brethren, in prayerfully studying the condition 
of this church, I have reached this conclusion : 
Many of you, through worldliness and neglect of 
duty, have lost "the blessedness you knew when 
first you saw the Lord." You are walking in dark- 
ness ; you are without comfort, without peace ; the 
spirit of prayer has forsaken you ; your service of 
God is the deadest formality ; you get out of it no 
inspiration, no help. In this condition you are 
clogging the wheels of Zion; you are making it 
almost impossible for the church to move forward 
and win a victory for God. Not until you follow 
the example of David and Peter by retracing your 
steps, not until you have felt the pangs of a godly 
sorrow for your sins, not until you have sought and 
found forgiveness, and God has restored to you the 
joy of salvation, can this church make a move to- 
wards the enemies of Christ with any reasonable 
hope of success. Not until then can she teach trans- 
gressors the way of truth and life, not until then 
will God use her for the conversion of sinners. 



RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 135 

An awful responsibility is upon you. If you can 
be made to feel it, and can be persuaded to put 
yourselves once more in touch with God, and in the 
line of Christian rectitude and duty, there is in re- 
serve for us a victory that will make gladness 
throughout all the camp of Israel on earth, and pro- 
voke even the glorified hosts of heaven to lift up 
their myriad voices in higher and sweeter notes of 
praise ! 



X 

INGERSOLLAND HIS INFIDELITY 1 



"The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. . . 
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart." Ps. 
19 : 7, 8. 

Mr. Ingersoll is a very successful trimmer. 
He would not say in this latitude what he has said 
in other regions of our country. Down here in the 
South, where Christian sentiment prevails, he is 
simply an agnostic, and refrains from much of the 
blasphemous ribaldry that has characterized his ut- 
terances in some sections of the North. Among the 
infidel Germans of the Northwest he is more than 
an agnostic, he is an atheist, unsparing in his denun- 
ciations of everything sacred to the Christian. 

The fact that this man is heard by multitudes of 
people, and that some have had the faith of their 
childhood disturbed and even uprooted by his as- 
saults upon Christianity, is a sufficient warrant for 
a brief discussion of some of his views. 

Mr. Ingersoll assumes that belief in God is in- 

1 Delivered as a reply to Ingersoll' s lecture, in Nashville, on 
1 ' Why Am I an Agnostic ? ' ' 
136 



INGEESOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 137 

compatible with reason, and that men who cherish 
this belief are weak and foolish. The Bible de- 
clares that " the fool hath said in his heart, there is 
no God," and it requires only a moderate exercise 
of our reason to prove this true, and that Mr. Inger- 
soll, and not the believer in God, is the fool. 

Every rational man must and does admit the 
eternal existence of something. If Mr. Ingersoll 
denies that the universe came from something he is 
the only infidel who does. Only a lunatic or an 
idiot would say that something came from nothing. 
It is incontrovertibly and everlastingly true that 
" from nothing nothing comes." This being true, 
we are compelled to believe that something has 
always existed, and that in that eternal something 
which antedates all other things, the universe had 
its origin. If Mr. Ingersoll is not at variance 
with all other infidels he accepts this conclusion. 

What is that something which antedates all other 
things, and from which all other things derive their 
existence ? The Bible calls it God, but Mr. Spen- 
cer has named it the " unknown and unknowable." 
The name is not essential ; but whether you call it 
protoplasm, or fire-mist, or force, or the unknown 
and unknowable, or God, you must admit that it is 
eternal, and that out of it all other things have come 
into existence. 

If that original something is the parent of all 



138 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 

other things, it has intelligence. If that original 
something is protoplasm, it is thinking protoplasm. 
If it is fire-mist, it is intelligent fire-mist. If it is 
force, it is rational force. 

Why do I say this ? Because it is a self-evident 
truth that a thing can communicate only what it 
possesses. Was that first thing protoplasm ? Then 
you and I came from it, and if you and I are intel- 
ligent beings there is intelligence in protoplasm. If 
it has intelligence, it is supreme intelligence, for there 
is nothing anterior or superior to it. 

What was the origin of matter ? Was it created ? 
If it was, there must be a personal creator, because 
a creation without a creator is unthinkable. If you 
say that matter was not created but has always ex- 
isted, I will ask you another question, What was 
the origin of motion ? Was it created ? If it was, 
there must be a personal creator, because there can- 
not be a creation without a creator. 

If you say that motion is eternal, that it never 
had a beginning, I will ask you a third question, 
What is the origin of thought ? Is it a creation ? 
If it is, there is a personal creator. If it is not a 
creation and has existed from all eternity, then we 
are compelled to admit the existence of an eternal 
thinking being. 

I challenge this infidel teacher, who comes to en- 
lighten the benighted minds of our people for a con- 



INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 139 

sideration of five hundred dollars a night, to inject 
into his next performance an answer to this ar- 
gument. 

In common with other materialists, Mr. Ingersoll 
claims that human life is transmitted. I will not 
controvert that proposition. But let him tell us 
from what the first man's life was transmitted. 
Perhaps he would answer, "From the monkey." 
If that is true, from what was the monkey's life 
transmitted? Perhaps he would answer, "From 
the alligator." If that is true, from what was the 
alligator's life transmitted ? From the lizard. Then 
from what was the lizard's life transmitted? Thus 
we may go back and back until we come to proto- 
plasm. 

What a relief to men like Ingersoll if the human 
mind would stop there. But it will not stop there. 
No sooner has the infidel declared that human life 
had its origin in protoplasm than I, and all other 
men who think, want to know where protoplasm 
got its life. 

Who then is the fool? The man who believes in 
a personal creator or the man who goes through the 
world selling his atheism for a consideration of five 
hundred dollars a night? 

In one of his lectures Mr. Ingersoll declares that 
the miracles of the Bible are frauds — the mere tricks 
of men who made their living by imposing upon 



140 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 

human ignorance and credulity. He claims that 
Jesus Christ was " only a sleight-of-hand man," 
and that he gained his pre-eminence among his 
associates only by his superior skill in feats of leger- 
demain. 

No man who admits that the universe is a creation 
and that it came from the hands of a personal crea- 
tor, can with any show of reason deny the possibility 
of miracles. To declare that a miracle is an im- 
possibility is equivalent to saying that God is inca- 
pable of performing a miracle. It is unmitigated 
folly to assume that God cannot do anything that 
he chooses to do. 

If it is admitted that God has performed one 
miracle, it is perfectly compatible with sound rea- 
soning to believe that he has performed other mira- 
cles. " In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth." " The worlds were made by the 
word of God." The fact here recorded was a mira- 
cle. Creation, whether by evolution or otherwise, 
was a miracle. The creation of the germ or the 
germs out of which the whole physical universe has 
grown, was a miraculous work, because it brought 
into existence something at a period when nothing 
existed but the divine Creator. 

Did Christ perform miracles? Nicodemus be- 
lieved that he did, for he went to him in person and 
said, " No man can do these miracles which thou 



INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 141 

doest, except God be with him." Nicodemus was a 
member of the great ecclesiastical high court of the 
Jews, a man of intelligence and learning, and one 
not liable to become the victim of a base trickster. 

The evangelists tell us that Jesus performed 
miracles ; but Mr. Ingersoll says no one knows 
who wrote the four Gospels. When he says this he 
convicts himself either of stupidity or dishonesty. 

He does not doubt that John Milton wrote " Para- 
dise Lost," or that Newton wrote " The Principia," 
or that Tom Paine wrote the "Age of Reason." 
Why does he not doubt it ? Because he accepts the 
testimony of history and tradition. 

Our belief that the Gospels were written by Mat- 
thew, Mark, Luke, and John rests upon the same 
kind of evidence. The testimony which sustains 
the authenticity of these sacred books is not only of 
the same kind that Mr. Ingersoll accepts with refer- 
ence to " Paradise Lost," " The Principia," and the 
" Age of Reason," but it is much more voluminous 
and conclusive, because the Gospels have occupied a 
much larger space in the thought of the world, and 
have been subjected to a more thorough investiga- 
tion. 

When Mr. Ingersoll says that no one knows who 
wrote the four Gospels, he charges all the earliest 
writers of the Christian era who quoted from these 
books, believing them to be the works of Matthew, 



142 



INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 



Mark, Luke, and John, with disgraceful ignorance 
and stupid credulity. 

Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian hated Christianity 
as bitterly as he, but their writings abound in quota- 
tions from the New Testament, and they never ques- 
tioned its authenticity. They never insinuated in 
the remotest degree that Christians of their day 
were mistaken as to the authorship of the four Gos- 
pels or any other part of the New Testament. 

I defy this infidel traducer to furnish one jot or 
tittle of evidence to show that any opponent of 
Christianity, during the first four centuries after 
Christ, ever questioned the genuineness of the New 
Testament, or expressed even a doubt as to the hon- 
esty of the men who claimed to be eyewitnesses of 
the miracles which they recorded. 

Mr. Ingersoll says that if Jesus had wrought the 
miracles which it is said he performed, the Jews 
would not have crucified him. This is a specimen 
of his ignorance of history. Every student of the 
Bible knows that the Jews did not deny the reality 
of the miracles of Jesus, but claimed that he worked 
these miracles through Satanic power. 

Mr. Ingersoll does not deny that Christ claimed 
to perform miracles, but declares that he was a de- 
ceiver, a sleight-of-hand man, a peripatetic trickster, 
who bamboozled the ignorant and unsuspecting rab- 
ble that followed him. 



INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 143 

What respect can any rational man have for such 
an indictment ? Can you believe that the man who 
taught the purest morality ever given to the world, 
and who lived the most benevolent life that men 
ever witnessed, and who died to bear testimony to 
what he taught, was a mere wandering vendor of 
tricks which he had learned from Egyptian magi- 
cians? No, you cannot believe it. Neither does 
Mr. Ingersoll believe it. Why then does he say it ? 
Ask the ticket man when you go to purchase your 
next admission to his lecture. 

When Mr. Ingersoll says that " the Bible is the 
most infamous book in the universe," he means, 
evidently, that of all the books in the universe, its 
standard of ethics is the lowest. Is there any basis 
of reason or fact for this accusation ? What is the 
morality of the Bible ? We may learn what it is, 
not by listening to a man who gets five hundred 
dollars a night for misrepresenting the Bible, but 
by going directly to the book itself. 

Here are some samples of Bible ethics. " Honor 
thy father and thy mother." " Children, obey your 
parents." "Thou shalt not commit adultery." 
" Thou shalt not steal." " Thou shalt not murder." 
" Thou shalt not bear false witness." " Love thy 
neighbor as thyself." " As ye have opportunity do 
good unto all men." "As ye would that men 
should do unto you > do ye even so to them." 



144 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 

"Love your enemies." "Above all things have 
fervent charity." " See that none render evil for 
evil unto any man." " If it be possible, as much 
as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." 
"Keep thyself pure." "Shun the very appear- 
ance of evil." 

In these passages we have an epitome of biblical 
morality. Is there anything here that will warrant 
this man in calling the Bible " the most infamous 
book in the universe " ? What manner of man 
would Mr. Ingersoll become if he should obey ali 
of these righteous precepts? A good man? Or 
the bad man that he is ? 

Jesus Christ, in his incarnate life, was the perfect 
embodiment and illustration of the ethics of the 
gospel which he preached. What was there in his 
life that deserved condemnation from any man ? 
Set over against Mr. IngersolPs reprobation of the 
morals of the New Testament the words of Mr. 
Lecky, one of the most intellectual and learned 
men of modern times. In his history of "Euro- 
pean Morals " he says : 

" It was reserved for Christianity to present to 
the world an ideal character, which through all the 
changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts 
of men with impassioned love ; which has shown 
itself capable of acting on all nations, ages, tempera- 
ments, and conditions ; which has not only been the 



INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 145 

highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incen- 
tive to its practice, and has exercised so deep an 
influence that it may be truly said that the simple 
record of his three short years of active life has 
done more to regenerate and soften mankind than 
all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the ex- 
hortations of moralists." This is the testimony of 
a great scholar and critic, a man whose learning is 
as much deeper than Mr. IngersolFs as mid-ocean 
is deeper than the little artificial lake on the grounds 
of our late Tennessee Centennial Exposition. 

An infallible and universal standard of right and 
wrong is an absolute necessity to mankind. There 
must be such a standard somewhere. But where is 
it ? It is not in ourselves. It is not what we feel, 
or think. That would make as many standards as 
there are individuals in the world, because no two 
human beings feel and think exactly alike. 

If every man were a law unto himself, there 
would be nothing but social chaos on the earth. 
The infallible and universal standard is the morality 
of the Bible, the essence of which is expressed in 
the Golden Rule, " As ye would that men should 
do unto you, do ye even so unto them." Neither 
man nor angel can conceive of anything higher and 
better than that. 

As Mr. Ingersoll does not admit the existence of 
God he does not believe in any universal law of 



146 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 

human rectitude. If there is no God, every man 
must decide for himself what is right and what is 
wrong. This is Mr. IngersolFs doctrine. He 
claims to be the ultimate judge for himself as to 
what is good and what is evil. What he commends 
is right, and what he condemns is wrong. 

This infidel is perfectly consistent with himself 
when he says, " I do not believe in the New Testa- 
ment doctrine of non-resistance." He believes 
that a man ought to resist anything that infringes 
on his natural liberty, the liberty to do whatever 
he desires to do. 

Society, in its organized capacity, is ever infring- 
ing upon man's natural liberties. It demands, as a 
consideration for the protection which it gives an 
individual, that he surrender his right to do any- 
thing that he wishes to do. Theoretically, at least, 
Ingersoll is an anarchist. He is against all exter- 
nal government, human or divine. 

He is consistent with this doctrine when he de- 
fends suicide. He believes that any man who is 
tired of life has the right to blow his brains out, 
and leave his dependent wife and children to endure 
the woes of poverty. Some years ago one of his 
disciples poisoned himself, and beside his dead body 
was one of IngersolPs books containing his damna- 
ble defense of suicide. 

But Mr. Ingersoll was strangely inconsistent with 



INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 147 

himself when he said, " Slavery is a crime that in- 
cludes all other crimes ; it is the joint product of 
the kidnapper, pirate, thief, murderer and hypo- 
crite. " 

I suppose there is not a man among us who does 
not rejoice at the dow r nfall of slavery in this 
country, though he may deprecate the methods by 
which its overthrow was accomplished. But we 
are not prepared to believe that every man in this 
republic who owned a slave was a pirate, or a thief, 
or a murderer, or a hypocrite. We do not believe 
that Patrick Henry, James Madison, Thomas Jeffer- 
son, and George Washington, were pirates, thieves, 
murderers, and hypocrites. We do not believe that 
even Mr. IngersolPs New England's ancestors, the 
first slaveholders on American soil, were a combi- 
nation of pirates, thieves, murderers, and hypocrites. 

" There is no God, or if there be one, we cannot 
know it. The Bible is a lie ; Jesus Christ was a 
sleight-of-hand man ; whatever a man believes to 
be right is right ; death is an eternal sleep ; or, if 
there be another life, we cannot know it." 

This is Mr. IngersolPs creed. Does any man in 
his right mind believe it is better than Christianity ? 
Mr. Ingersoll said here : " I hate your religion ; I 
hate your God ; while I live I am going to try to 
civilize Christians ; I always hated Jehovah, and 
used to wish that somebody would kill him." 



148 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 

Does any man, who is not bereft of reason, be- 
lieve that the universal adoption of such blasphe- 
mous sentiments would advance the world in virtue, 
happiness, and prosperity? Would it reform the 
drunkard? Would it make virtuous and useful 
men of thieves, bandits, and murderers? Would 
it elevate our characters, dignify the objects of our 
pursuit, and render us patient and cheerful in ad- 
versity ? 

Would it improve our social condition ? Would 
it subdue wrong and establish justice? Would it 
enlarge our sympathies, harmonize discordant ele- 
ments, and bind together the dissevered races of 
mankind in the bonds of a great, virtuous, loving, 
and happy brotherhood ? 

No man, who has mind enough to understand the 
influence of principles upon conduct, believes that 
the prevalence of Ingersollism would accomplish 
these results. 

Mr. Ingersoll himself sees in this proposed sub- 
stitute for Christianity no real benefit to the world. 
The only tangible blessing to any one which comes 
within the range of his agnostic vision, when he 
discusses these questions, is the five hundred dollars 
which he is to receive for his blasphemous work. 

I make no hasty and reckless assertion when I 
say that the desire on the part of thousands and 
hundreds of thousands of men and women to re- 



INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 149 

organize society on the basis of IngersolPs infidelity, 
is at the bottom of the evils which now threaten 
the existence of this government. 

All this unjust legislation in the interest of 
monopoly had its origin in the hearts of men who 
repudiate moral government and the doctrine of 
retribution after death. All these wild anarchistic 
methods, which certain elements of the oppressed 
classes are adopting for the redress of their griev- 
ances, are inspired by a belief in the utterances of 
Mr. Ingersoll. 

Ingersoll may harbor in his breast no revolution- 
ary purpose. I am inclined to believe that he has 
nothing in view beyond the accumulation of money 
and the gratification of his mad passion for vulgar 
notoriety. But the doctrine which he teaches, fall- 
ing as it does upon the ears of millions of ignorant 
and already dissatisfied people, if not counteracted, 
is destined to bring forth an unprecedented harvest 
of debauchery, lawlessness, and crime. 

Christianity is not an experiment. It has been 
tried, and it has not failed. Wherever it has been 
taught in its original simplicity and purity, it has 
made men better and advanced every interest of 
society. 

As authority upon this subject, every intelligent 
person would put James Anthony Froude immeasur- 
ably above Robert G. Ingersoll. In a recent work 



150 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 

he says, " All that we call modern civilization, in a 
sense which deserves the name, is the visible ex- 
pression of the transforming power of the gospel." 

Gladstone, the most colossal man of modern Eng- 
land, was persistent in declaring that all that is best 
in the civilization of this century is traceable di- 
rectly or indirectly to the gospel of the Man of 
Galilee. 

Bismarck, who was a diligent and devout reader 
of the Bible, said that he could not understand 
how any one could endure existence unsustained by 
a belief in its teachings. 

How foolish to turn away from the mature wis- 
dom of these majestic men to listen to the rhetori- 
cal vaporings and silly ribaldry of an infidel hire- 
ling. 

" The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the 
soul." It puts into earthy, corrupt, groveling 
human nature a new principle of life. It quickens 
and unfetters all the higher and finer faculties of 
the human soul, starts it on a career of noblest 
service here, and fits it for an immortality of honor 
and blessedness in a life to come. A religion that 
does this is surely not " the most infamous thing in 
the universe." A God who has given us such a 
religion does not deserve to be " hated and killed." 

Run a parallel between the life of Robert Inger- 
soll, a hired defamer of the Christian's God and 



INGERSOKL AND HIS INFIDELITY 151 

Saviour, and the life of Florence Nightingale, who, 
animated by the spirit of him who "went about 
doing good," devoted every capacity and energy of 
her existence to the relief of human suffering, and 
went to her grave laden with the benedictions of a 
grateful world. Make the comparison and you will 
see something of the infinite superiority of the gos- 
pel of love and immortality over the gospel of dirt 
and suicide. 



XI 

WHAT IS SIN ? 



" Sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 3 : 4. 

Here we have God's definition of sin. This is 
what the human conscience everywhere declares it 
to be. This is what human history proves it to be. 
Men have made many fruitless efforts to overthrow 
the doctrine that sin is a violation of divine law. 
Some have tried to maintain the foolish philosophy 
which says that there are two Gods ; that sin is the 
oifspring of one and virtue of the other ; that good 
and evil are essential to each other, and must there- 
fore exist forever. Other men have belabored them- 
selves to prove that sin is inherent in matter, and 
therefore is physical ; that it belongs entirely to the 
body ; that it is strong when the body is strong, and 
weak when the body is weak, and that the soul is in 
no degree responsible for it. 

If either of these philosophies be true, it is worse 
than folly in us to be concerned about sin. If we 
are not responsible for it, and it is something en- 
tirely beyond our control, then our guilt is only im- 

152 



WHAT IS SIN? 153 

aginary, and the men whom we are wont to call 
felons are as innocent as angels of light. 

But if the Bible is true, and the human con- 
science does not lie, sin is the transgression of divine 
law ; and if it is the transgression of divine law, to 
commit sin is to incur guilt, and all who are guilty 
before God are under sentence of death. 

" Sin is the transgression of the law." Paul is 
here speaking of God's moral law, a law written on 
the human constitution and clearly revealed in the 
sacred Scriptures. This law forbids us to do certain 
things, and lays upon us the obligation to do certain 
other things. 

To reach some conception of your guilt you have 
only to take the Ten Commandments as interpreted 
by Christ's Sermon on the Mount, and in the light 
of them ask yourself this question : " How often 
have I done what is here forbidden and failed to do 
what is here required of me ? " You cannot recall 
one transgression in a thousand, and yet you can re- 
member enough to keep you counting for the rest of 
your life. 

Why do men violate the law of God ? Is not 
that law wise and just and good ? Does not obe- 
dience to it render human character beautiful and 
lovely ? Should not every human being covet a life 
in harmony with the perfect law of God ? 

Is not virtue more desirable than vice ? Should 



154 WHAT IS SIN? 

not every man desire moral cleanness? Is there 
anything more beautiful than innocence? How 
bewitchingly lovely is a young life from which 
the morning dew of purity has not been brushed 
away by the hand of corruption ! If conformity to 
divine law is the very essence of good character, and 
makes life peaceful, happy, and luminous, why do 
men despise and violate that law ? 

Sin, as seen in its last analysis, is selfishness. Any 
revolt against God, any violation of his holy law, is 
simply the assertion of self, the determination to do 
what we like to do and not what we ought to do. 

What is behind murder ? What begets murder ? 
Nothing but a selfish passion that must be gratified, 
even at the cost of a human life and the destruction 
of a human home. What is theft ? It is self, ap- 
propriating what does not belong to it. What is 
lying? It is self, seeking to mislead for its own 
advantage. What is drunkenness? It is brutal 
selfhood feeding its own vile passions. What is 
the drunkard-maker? The incarnation of a selfish 
ambition. To gratify his greed of gain he would 
wreck a human life, corrupt a human soul, drown a 
peaceful home in sorrow, multiply widows and or- 
phans, debauch a city, destroy a nation, and turn 
paradise into pandemonium. 

To the selfish man the world is nothing but 
a great mirror, in which he sees nothing but a 



WHAT IS SIN? 155 

million-fold reflection of himself. Nothing interests 
him but the sound of his own name, the cry of his 
own lust, and the sight of his own possessions. 

All sin, in its ultimate analysis, is the sin of self. 
You break God's law only because you want to dis- 
place it with a law of your own. You reject the 
God of the universe only because you want to be a 
god unto yourself. 

What are the fruits of sin ? We shall never ab- 
hor sin as it deserves to be abhorred until we have 
an intelligent conception of the terrible mischief of it. 

Sin makes us debtors to divine justice. To me 
debt is one of the ugliest words in the English 
language. When I was a little boy my father came 
home from business one day, sat down by my mother, 
and uttered the most distressful moans I had ever 
heard. When she asked for an explanation of his 
conduct, he said, " My dear wife, I am in debt." I 
was too young to know the meaning of the word, 
but supposed it to indicate some very serious bodily 
ailment that required the immediate attention of the 
family physician. 

Not many months after this incident, my father 
returned from market with the proceeds of his cot- 
ton crop and, taking a number of papers from one 
pocket and a roll of money from another, he said 
to my mother, in a voice that was simply jubilant, 
" Wife, I'm out of debt." I did not know what 



156 WHAT IS SIN? 

that was, but supposing it to be some great deliver- 
ance, I ran as fast as my little feet could take me 
to every member of the household, exclaiming at 
the top of my voice, " Father's out of debt, father's 
out of debt." 

Oh, the moaning and groaning of the world to- 
day over debts — debts that were so easy to make, 
but which are now so hard to pay ! 

Young man, I solemnly warn you against the 
ruinous folly of burdening yourself with debts. I 
beseech you to record a vow that you will never 
put upon yourself this harrowing affliction. If you 
have an income of only a hundred dollars a year, 
live within it. Live within it, if you have to sleep 
in a garret, wear second-hand clothing, and subsist 
on bread and water. As you value your own self- 
respect and manhood, and the proud satisfaction of 
standing before the world and saying, " I owe no 
man anything," give a wide berth to those who 
would persuade you to live beyond your income. 

The bitter experiences which we have under the 
burden of financial obligations, are but faint inti- 
mations of the incomparably deeper misery of con- 
scious indebtedness to divine justice. That is a 
debt we can never pay. That is a debt which 
accumulates daily and hourly, and with fearful 
rapidity. See if you can arrive at any definite con- 
ception of its present proportions. Calculate the 



WHAT IS SIN? 157 

indebtedness incurred by the commission of just one 
sin. But how can you calculate it without being 
able to measure the majesty and holiness of God's 
law, and the endless consequences of your sin upon 
the order and happiness of God's universe ? If 
you had the exact data with which to begin, if 
you knew the indebtedness incurred by one trans- 
gression, and the whole number of your transgres- 
sions, it would require the rest of your life to cal- 
culate your present indebtedness to God's justice. 

My friend, what you owe must be paid, even to 
the uttermost farthing, or the penalty will be in- 
flicted upon you. The magnitude and awfulness of 
that penalty cannot be expressed in the language of 
mortals. It is " everlasting destruction from the 
presence of the Lord and from the glory of his 
power." But no human mind can compass the sig- 
nificance of these inspired words. If you knew 
what Christ suffered in that hour when he turned 
his dying eyes to a darkened heaven and cried, 
" My God ! My God ! Why hast thou forsaken 
me ? " you might measure the agony of a human 
soul, banished from the " presence of the Lord and 
from the glory of his power " into everlasting dark- 
ness. 

Sin not only lays upon us a burden of a debt 
which we can never remove, but it fastens upon us 
the chains of a bondage from which we can never 



158 WHAT IS SIN? 

emancipate ourselves. A few years ago I visited a 
State prison. As I looked upon the poor creatures 
incarcerated there, I tried to fathom their anguish. 
I thought of their fruitless sighing for liberty, their 
constant yearning for pure air and the gladdening 
sunshine, their loathing of the prison food, and 
their sense of isolation from everything beautiful 
and good. 

I went into a cell occupied by a man who was 
under sentence of death. The only light that re- 
lieved the darkness of that cell came through a 
little opening in the wall. The air was freighted 
with impurity. I looked into the face of that 
doomed man, and read there the record of the ter- 
rible struggles through which he had passed. His 
once stalwart form had wasted to a skeleton ; the 
dungeon darkness, the foul air, and the unwhole- 
some food, added to the woes of conscience and the 
pangs of an incurable grief, had sapped the founda- 
tions of his strength. All that was only a shadow 
of the bondage of sin. No chains are so real and 
so galling as those which bind the guilty soul, and 
no darkness is so dense and horrible as that which 
envelops the slave of sin. 

O ye who profane God's name and desecrate 
God's Sabbath, and ye who deceive and defraud in 
business and politics, and ye who frequent bar-rooms, 
gambling houses, and other places of uncleanness, 



WHAT IS SIN? 159 

I am guilty of no extravagance of speech when I 
say that ye are the devil's galley slaves. The last 
vestige of your freedom is gone. Every day and 
hour ye do the bidding of the same taskmaster 
whom devils and damned spirits serve. This ter- 
rible bondage grows worse and worse as the years 
come and go. Every day you sink to some lower 
depth. Every sin which you commit to-day will 
be prolific of greater sins to-morrow. Every act 
of uncleanness whets your appetite for something 
still more foul and loathsome. 

If this is your bondage in the present world, 
what must it be in that other world, which is the 
dumping-ground for all the filth of God's universe? 
Who can measure the possibilities of a human 
soul in a career of depravity where all restraints 
upon its devilish passions are removed? What 
imagination can depict the horrors of existence in 
such a place ? What artist can paint the abomina- 
tions of that receptacle of all uncleanness, and the 
terrors of that gulf of outer darkness, through 
which no star will ever float to tell of coming day ? 

Another of the baleful fruits of sin, is alienation 
from God. The man who is under the dominion of 
sin is absolutely without fellowship with God. 

A wicked man once said to a Christian minister, 
" You may speak to me on any subject but religion." 
That man was not an infidel ; his convictions were 



160 WHAT IS SIN? 

on the side of religion ; but loving sin and serving 
Satan, he shrank from contact with that Holy Being 
in whose nostrils sin is an intolerable stench. 

This is what keeps so many men away from the 
house of God. This is why the drunkard, the 
gambler, the whoremonger, the forger, the swindler, 
the demagogue, the ballot-box stuffer, and the po- 
litical trader do not come to the Lord's sanctuary. 
They have no fellowship with God, and they do not 
care to go where they will be reminded of him. 
Such alienation from God in this world will ripen 
into an everlasting separation. 

My impenitent friend, the voice of God to you 
to-day is, " Come unto me. Come and abide with 
me, and I will be a Father to you, and will bestow 
upon you a heritage of everlasting blessedness." 
But your response is, " No ; I will not come. De- 
part from me." By and by there will be a day 
when God will cease to invite you, and when he 
will turn upon you with words borrowed from 
your own lips, " Depart from me." From that 
hour between him and you there will be " a great 
gulf fixed." Then will come the " horror of great 
darkness," and the wail of woe to which no voice of 
pity will ever respond. 

I have presented a frightful picture of the present 
condition of the ungodly man. That picture is not 
overdrawn. No mathematician can calculate and 



WHAT IS SIN? 161 

no figures can express the magnitude of the sinner's 
indebtedness to divine justice. Worse than his in- 
debtedness is the slavery into which he has sold 
himself. All this debt and bondage and degrada- 
tion have so alienated his heart from God that he 
will not have God in all his thoughts. What shall 
we say to those of whom this is a truthful picture ? 
Shall we tell them that they are beyond the orbit of 
hope ? Shall we tell them that there is no eye to 
pity and no arm to save men who have fallen so 
low? 

No, no ! Thanks be to God, it is our great privi- 
lege and our unspeakable joy to tell them of One 
" able also to save them unto the uttermost." God's 
infinite mercy has provided for them a great Debt- 
payer who is competent to meet all of their obliga- 
tions to divine law. 

What is the significance of such words as these : 
" For Christ also hath once suffered for sin, the 
just for the unjust"; "he hath made him to be 
sin for us who knew no sin " ; " who died for us " ; 
" in due time Christ died for the ungodly " ; " while 
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us " ; " who 
his own self bare our sins in his own body on the 
tree " ? 

The obvious and unmistakable meaning of these 
scriptures is that Jesus Christ became our substitute, 
that he took our place under the law of God and met 



162 WHAT IS SIN? 

all of its demands against us, that by the sacrifice 
of himself he paid all of man's indebtedness to eter- 
nal justice. 

Having accomplished all this by his atoning work, 
he is now " the end of the law for righteousness to 
every one that believeth." Mark the condition — 
" to every one that believeth." Christ died for you, 
but his death availeth nothing on your behalf until 
you believe. " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ 
and thou shalt be saved." " He that believeth on 
the Son hath everlasting life," and " He that be- 
lieveth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath 
of God abideth on him." 

Lift your eyes to-day to him who sits yonder on 
the great white throne of justice and mercy, and 
let this be your prayer : " O righteous Judge, my 
debt is infinite, and I have nothing with which to 
pay even a fraction of it. My plea, my only plea, 
is that Jesus paid it all — all the debt I owe." Do 
this, and up there where the records are kept, God 
will say to his registering angel, "That man's 
account is settled. Let it so appear in the book of 
remembrance." 

But the great salvation revealed to us in Jesus 
Christ provides not only for the obliteration of our 
debts, but for our freedom also from the love and 
power of sin. The same mercy which pays the 
debt will bestow the freedom ; the same love that 



WHAT IS SIN? 163 

saves us from hell will prepare us for heaven. 
Every true believer in Jesus Christ has received a 
new birth. " If any man be in Christ, he is a new 
creature ; old things have passed away, behold, all 
things have become new." 

When you think of the degradation and wretch- 
edness from which men are saved, and the dignity, 
freedom, purity, happiness, and glory to which they 
are lifted by God's great scheme of redemption, can 
you doubt the reality of what the Scriptures call 
" the joy of salvation " ? Can you wonder that re- 
deemed men rend the air with shouts of gladness ? 
Can you wonder that these Christian sanctuaries re- 
sound with hosannas and hallelujahs? Can you 
wonder that men to whom this great salvation has 
come would 

Soar and touch the heavenly strings 
And vie with Gabriel while he sings 
In notes almost divine. 



XII 

LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED 
HARLOT 



"To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." 
Luke 7 : 47. 

One of the greatest of our Lord's discourses was 
listened to by a despised outcast. Her reputation 
was bad enough, but her character was worse. A 
rich Pharisee, who heard the same sermon invited 
the Master and his disciples to dine with him, and 
the invitation was promptly accepted. 

The guilty woman was profoundly stirred by the 
Saviour's gracious invitations and promises. All 
that was left in her of moral sense was aroused and 
active. She was so absorbed in what she had 
heard, and her heart was so full of penitence for 
sin, and of gratitude to him who had spoken such 
merciful words to the sinful and degraded, that 
when our Lord and his disciples went into the 
Pharisee's house she unconsciously followed them. 
When Jesus sat at the table she crawled to his feet, 
clasped them with her hands, and bathed them with 

164 



LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 165 

her tears. Not content with this expression of 
gratitude and affection, she took a fragrant oil which 
she had been accustomed to use in her wicked voca- 
tion, and poured it upon the Saviour's feet. 

The Pharisee was greatly offended by our Lord's 
toleration of this woman's attentions. He said 
within himself, " If he were what he professes to 
be, he would know who this woman is and w T ould 
not allow her to touch him." 

It was nothing to this Pharisee that the woman 
was penitent, that she had abandoned her unclean 
habits, and that her tears were expressive of her 
gratitude to him whose merciful words had led her 
into a better life. He could see only the fact that 
Jesus had violated a conventional regulation which 
made it improper for a Jew to be touched by an 
impure person. 

That Pharisee w r as a typical character. He was 
a representative of a class whose name is legion. I 
know men who would be shocked at the sight of a 
violation of a church canon, but who would bet on 
a horse race without any disturbance of their moral 
sensibility. I know men who think I am very pro- 
fane because I do not lift my hat when I pass a 
church that has a cross on its steeple, but whose 
consciences give them no trouble when they swindle 
the public treasury or buy votes at a political elec- 
tion. Nothing is more despicable in the eyes of 



166 LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 

right-minded men, and nothing more offensive to 
God than a merely technical, ceremonial, and con- 
ventional piety. The Bible gives us the true test 
of godliness when it says, "He that doeth right- 
eousness is righteous." 

Jesus explained to the Pharisee the conduct of 
this woman. She had been a great sinner, and she 
was deeply conscious of the fact. She felt that she 
had been the guiltiest of the guilty and the vilest 
of the vile. But knowing her sins to be forgiven, 
she was overcome with the sense of divine compas- 
sion and mercy. The pouring out of the aromatic 
oil upon the feet of her Redeemer was her heart's 
loving tribute to his condescending goodness. She 
loved and adored him in proportion to the guilt 
which he had removed from her troubled spirit. 

From the conduct of this penitent, believing, and 
grateful woman, so strongly commended by our 
Divine Teacher, we derive lessons of pre-eminent 
value. 

1. It is good for any one to have a deep and 
painful experience of personal guilt. If a man has 
passed through a spiritual struggle which made him 
feel the power of evil in his own heart, and revealed 
to him not only the hatefulness but the destructive- 
ness of sin ; if he has been made to see himself in 
the grasp of the mighty Apollyon, and to realize his 
nearness to the gates of hell — great will be his 



LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 167 

appreciation of God's grace, and great will be his 
gratitude and love, when he is conscious that divine 
forgiveness and redemption have been bestowed 
upon him. No man who has a wrong conception 
of sin can have a right conception of grace. Our 
appreciation of God's forgiving mercy is in propor- 
tion to our conviction of sin and our consciousness 
of the peril from which we have been saved. 

There is great advantage in having a deep con- 
viction of our depravity and sin. A shallow sense 
of personal guilt makes a shallow Christian char- 
acter. A profound sense of moral turpitude will 
produce a corresponding sense of obligation to God. 
But just at this point we are in danger of falling 
into a serious and fatal error. It is not uncommon 
to hear some one say, " I do not feel my sinfulness 
so keenly as I ought to feel it. I cannot become a 
Christian until I am more deeply convicted. I am 
praying and waiting for more remorse of conscience." 
Such a person will linger for months and months, 
and year after year, on the threshold of the king- 
dom, hoping and waiting for an experience that will 
make him more worthy of God's forgiving and sav- 
ing grace. 

This is a fearful mistake. What is conviction of 
sin good for but to help one to turn from sin, and 
to seek pardon of him whose prerogative it is to for- 
give iniquity, transgression, and sin. 



168 LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 

If your conviction is deep enough to make you 
desire to be a better man, begin with that. Is it 
strong enough to take you to God in prayer? 
Begin with that. If you honestly desire to live 
under the dominion of higher principles, motives, 
and feelings, begin with that. Begin with what 
you have, and as you go forward in the path of 
obedience your moral sense will grow stronger, and 
your conviction of sin will become deeper and more 
intense. There is not an old Christian in this com- 
munity who will not tell you that his sense of sin 
and his consciousness of personal unworthiness, are 
many thousand fathoms deeper to-day than they 
were when he began to follow Christ. These ex- 
periences will intensify as you go on in the divine 
life. Your conceptions of the vast accumulation of 
personal guilt from which God's mercy has relieved 
you, will enlarge, day by day, up to your last hour. 

2. Another lesson taught us by the conduct of 
this converted harlot is, that pre-eminently wicked 
persons, when converted, ought to be pre-eminently 
earnest and active Christians. By this remark I do 
not mean that those who have been moral from 
childhood should not be conspicuously useful Chris- 
tians. I mean that there are special reasons why 
men who have been shamefully and notoriously 
wicked, should be zealous workers in the vineyard 
of the Lord. 



LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 169 

Great wickedness is usually indicative of great 
natural strength somewhere. Men given to great 
dissipation have strong passions. Cruel and brutal 
men have usually marked ability in some direction. 
Strength and violent wickedness go together, except 
where wickedness takes the form of meanness. 

I have great hopes of a man who sometimes gets 
on a desperate spree, has a fight or two, and comes 
out of his debauch hatless, coatless, bruised, and 
bloody. If you can get him from under the damn- 
ing despotism of drink there are elements of power 
in him that may be developed into greatness. Hun- 
dreds of such men have been lifted out of the pit 
and have become heroes for truth and God on a 
thousand battlefields. Murphy, Gough, and Sam 
Jones, in their earlier years, belonged to the most 
degraded and desperate class of drunkards. But 
when God broke the fetters of their bondage and set 
them free, they became Christian athletes, and the 
bravest of leaders in Christian warfare. 

But for the man whose depravity sinks into mean- 
ness there is scarcely any hope. When a man per- 
mits me to meet pecuniary obligations for him which 
he is amply able to provide for, when his selfish- 
ness culminates in dishonesty and rascality, I con- 
sider his case about hopeless. 

Usually, where there is great power displayed in 
wrong-doing there is great power to react from 



170 LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 

wrong and to move in the opposite direction. If a 
man has been going away from God with gigantic 
energy and force, when he turns he ought to come 
back with something like the same determination, 
vigor, and impetuosity. The world expects one who 
has defied and outraged the public conscience to be 
brave and enthusiastic as a Christian when he is 
converted from the error of his way. 

It is very pitiful to see a man who was once 
valiant for Satan timid and cowardly in the service 
of God. Passion is doing its legitimate work only 
when it impels us in the path of duty. Its function 
is to go behind conscience, faith, and love, and make 
them potential and fruitful. When a notoriously 
wicked man is converted we expect him to be note- 
worthily good. One whose associations have long 
been with bad men is in possession of knowledge 
which he ought to use in the cause of truth and vir- 
tue. If a man has been rescued from drunkenness 
he has an experience which qualifies him for being 
very serviceable in delivering others from the grasp 
of the merciless fiend. He knows the pangs of an 
unnatural and direful thirst. He knows what it is 
to sell the shelter over the heads of dependent and 
helpless children. He knows what it is to mortgage 
even the marriage ring, placed upon the finger of a 
loving wife as a token and reminder of plighted 
vows. He knows what it is to hear a child cry for 



LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 171 

bread when there is not a morsel of meal in the 
barrel. He knows what it is to feel slimy vipers 
crawling over his flesh, and to see a thousand furies 
whirling before him. When that man is redeemed 
by the grace of God from the despotism of alcohol 
he is in possession of a knowledge which qualifies 
him to be an apostle of temperance. 

Gambling is worse than drunkenness. It sends 
its ruthless plowshare through a family until the 
wife is a ragged beggar on the streets, and the 
daughters sell themselves into disgrace, and the sons 
grow up to be thieves and outlaws. The gambler 
is unrestrained by any influence. The sweet calls 
of love bound back from his iron soul, and all en- 
dearments and tender ties are consumed in the flame 
of his devilish passion. 

I rejoice to know that it is possible for a gambler 
even to be saved. When man comes out from such a 
bondage into the liberty and blessedness of the king- 
dom of God, who can estimate his power for good ? 
What a weight of obligation is upon him ! With 
what fervid zeal and supernal eloquence he ought 
to plead with men who are the slaves of the same 
tyrant that once dragged him through the mire 
and filth of degradation and wickedness. 

What a pitiable conception some people have of 
Christian life ! They think of a Christian as one 
who has been cleansed like a garment that has 



172 LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 

passed through a laundry. Divinely washed and 
polished, he is hung up in the Lord's wardrobe, 
where no smoke nor dust of earth can get at him. 
Some of our churches are dying from an excess of 
these wardrobe Christians. 

When a man is called out of a worldly and 
wicked life he is called to work; he is called to 
war ; he is called to suffer ; he is called to go out 
into the lanes and alleys and down into the slums 
and rescue the fallen and perishing. 

When a man is converted — truly converted — and 
looks with an enlightened conscience and a glorified 
understanding along his past life, if he has been very 
wicked, how wonderful to him must be the mercy of 
God ! When the prodigal son, who had squandered 
all his substance in riotous living and sunk to com- 
panionship with the swine, got back to the old home- 
stead and felt his father's arms entwined about his 
neck, and saw the feast that had been prepared for 
the celebration of his return, how wonderful to 
him were his father's love and goodness. 

If you feel that you have been " snatched as a 
brand from the burning," it will be pleasing to God 
and profitable to you to sit down again and again 
and meditate upon the mercy that saved you from a 
terrible doom. 

I carry in my bosom to-day a secret concerning 
a man which, if I should reveal it, would make him, 



LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 173 

his children, and his children's children infamous in 
the eyes of the world. Of that dark deed I know 
that he has repented a thousand times. If tears of 
blood are possible to mortals they have fallen from 
his eyes. God has forgiven him, but he has never 
forgiven himself. The recollection of his crime and 
the realization of God's pardoning mercy have made 
him not only one of the humblest of men, but one 
of the most zealous of Christian workers. He feels 
that he has been the chief of sinners, that his sal- 
vation was God's greatest miracle of mercy, and 
that nothing less than a martyr's zeal will express 
his sense of obligation and the depth of his grati- 
tude. 

Shame on the man who is content to be a dwarf 
among Christians after he has been a giant among 
sinners. Shame on the man who, after having 
been a master workman in the kingdom of Satan, 
prefers to be a drone and an idler in the kingdom 
of Christ. 

When a man who has fought under the banner 
of sedition and treason has been pardoned for his 
crime and restored to the fellowship and confidence 
of his fellow-countrymen, so far from being ashamed 
of his nation's flag, he delights to stand beneath its 
folds, and bear it aloft as the symbol of the security 
and freedom which he enjoys. 

Are there not some here to-day who, though they 



174 LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 

claim to have received pardon from God for their 
numberless transgressions of his holy law, are 
ashamed to put on the Christian's uniform and 
march behind the flag of the divine Captain of their 
salvation ? They are ashamed to step before this 
multitude and say, " Jesus Christ is my Redeemer 
and my Master." They cherish the hope of endless 
blessedness up yonder, where the flowers never 
wither and the rainbow never fades, but they will 
make no public confession of him whose love and 
mercy have kindled that precious hope in their sin- 
ful breasts. 

O thou ungrateful recipient of divine mercy, 
will you carry your religion as you carry a dark 
lantern, and use it as a light only to your own feet ? 
After a life in which you have done and suffered 
nothing for Christ, will he meet you at the gate of 
heaven and say, " Well done, good and faithful 
servant " ? Do you expect that after such a life is 
over, your friends will write upon your tombstone, 
" Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord ; that 
they may rest from their labors ; and their works do 
follow them " ? 

3. We learn from the example of this converted 
harlot how to perpetuate our names and influence 
in the world. What we do for ourselves in the 
gratification of worldly pride and ambition shall 
perish, but what we do for Christ will live forever. 



LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 175 

Great scientific specialists, who have spent their 
lives in the study of Egyptian relics, tell us that 
the pyramids are monuments to Egyptian kings. 
But who built them ? We do not know. We shall 
never know. For whom were they built ? We do 
not know ; we shall never know. Their whole 
history is an obscuration and a mystery. 

There were men in Thebes, Tyre, and Babylon, 
who strove for earthly immortality, but they are for- 
gotten. Not so with the humble woman whose con- 
duct has furnished the theme for this occasion. 
The tears which she shed, and the precious oil 
which she poured upon the feet of Jesus, will cause 
her name to be held in everlasting remembrance. 

There have been more brilliant women than 
Florence Nightingale, but none whose memory is 
more fragrant, and whose influence for good is more 
potent and enduring. Millions of men who had 
more genius than Adoniram Judson are forgotten, 
but his name and deeds will go down to the latest 
generation. 

Up yonder, in the temple of heaven, the names 
of all who have lived, labored, and suffered for 
Christ, are inscribed in letters of living light, and 
there they will appear, to the eyes of admiring mil- 
lions, when every monument of earth has perished 
back to dust, and the sun himself has grown dim 
with age. 



XIII 
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 



" When they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding 
great joy.' ' Matt. 2 : 10. 

Great historical critics and chronological ex- 
perts assure us that Jesus Christ was not born on 
the twenty-fifth day of December, but at some time 
during the latter part of the spring. If it were defi- 
nitely known that he was born on the twenty-fifth 
day of December there is nothing in the Scriptures 
to warrant the special observance of the day. There 
is no more divine authority for the observance of it 
than there is for the celebration of St. Patrick's 
Day. According to the Scriptures the Sabbath is 
the only day which we are required to observe dif- 
ferently from other days. But while we care noth- 
ing for the day upon which Christ was born, the 
fact of his birth and the signs and wonders attend- 
ing it are worthy of eternal celebration. 

If the death of Christ is a great mystery, his birth 
is a greater one. A great writer says : " In my 
wondering I can scarcely get past his cradle to 
wonder at his ert3S." 
176 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 177 

I am not surprised that the birth of such a being 
was signalized by supernatural phenomena. If at 
his death the earth trembled, the veil of the temple 
was rent, and the sun refused to shine, we should 
not think it strange that at his birth a star rolled up 
the eastern sky and stood over his cradle, while a 
great multitude of the heavenly host sang, " Glory 
to God in the highest ! " 

The magi were the astronomers and astrologers of 
Persia and Babylonia. They read the secrets of the 
earth in the movements of the stars. They inter- 
preted the appearance of the new star which they 
had seen to mean the birth of a great king, and 
some of them set out toward Jerusalem to find him. 
They went to that city and inquired for him, but he 
w r as not there. As they departed from Jerusalem, 
the star which they had seen in the east went before 
them and stood over Bethlehem, Judea, and there 
they found the infant Christ. 

Some scientists have tried to explain aw T ay the 
supernatural features of this astronomical wonder. 
Kepler attempted this as far back as 1630. He re- 
ferred to the fact that in the year when our Lord 
was born there were three conjunctions of the planets 
Jupiter and Saturn. The first occurred in May, 
the second in October, and the third in November. 
He thinks that the astrology-loving magi may have 
connected these conjunctions of the planets w T ith the 

M 



178 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 

birth of a Jewish king. He supposes that after the 
May conjunction they set out on their journey to Je- 
rusalem, and when they reached that city they saw 
the October or November conjunction, either of 
which, at certain hours, would have been in the di- 
rection of Bethlehem. 

Dr. John A. Broadus, in his great commentary 
on Matthew, disposes of Kepler's theory by simply 
reminding us that the Greek word here is aster, a star, 
and not astron, a group of stars, and that the two 
planets could not have had the appearance of a 
single star, because they were never nearer to each 
other than one degree, a distance which is equal to 
twice the diameter of the moon. 

Luteroth attempts to get rid of the miracle by 
saying that there are variable stars — stars which, 
after being invisible for a long time, reappear, and 
that such a disappearing and reappearing star was 
probably seen by the magi. This theory is irrec- 
oncilable with the words of the Scriptures, "The 
star went before them till it came and stood over 
where the young child was." 

If a natural star went before or in advance of the 
magi from Jerusalem it was certainly in advance of 
them when they reached Bethlehem. The language 
of the sacred historian is, that " the star stood over 
where the young child was." If we believe this 
statement we are compelled to believe that the star 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 179 

and its movements through the heavens constituted 
a miracle, and that God wrought such a miracle to 
emphasize the dignity and divinity of the character 
and mission of the child Jesus. 

When the magi saw the star going before them 
toward Bethlehem, "they rejoiced with exceeding 
great joy." As astronomers they were happy over 
a phenomenon which marked an era in the progress 
of their science. They rejoiced because they be- 
lieved that they were about to witness the fulfill- 
ment of the prophecies which they had made in 
their own country when they first saw this new lu- 
minary in the heavens. 

It is recorded that when they found the child 
Jesus " they worshiped him." Evidently they did 
not worship him as a divine being, because they had 
then no true conception of his character and mis- 
sion. They did homage to him as an infant king — 
as one who was destined to wield a mighty scepter 
and exert a commanding influence upon surrounding 
kingdoms. 

If those heathen astrologers, with their crude 
ideas of the mission of this wonderful child, rejoiced 
over his advent, how much greater should be our 
joy, knowing him to be the long-promised Messiah, 
the Divine Redeemer of sinful and lost humanity, 
and the Almighty Ruler of a spiritual kingdom 
against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. 



180 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 

That miraculous luminary which guided the magi 
to the manger was symbolic of the exalted mission 
of him whose advent it announced. In the Scrip- 
tures he is called " the star that should come out of 
Jacob/' and also " the bright and morning star." 

There is nothing that we contemplate with more 
curiosity and wonder than a star shining in the far- 
away depths of ether. The person who wrote — 

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, 
How I wonder what you are ; 
Up above the world so high, 
Like a diamond in the sky, 

expressed something deeper than the thought of a 
child. The greatest astronomer of this age, when 
looking through the mightiest telescope upon one of 
those distant orbs, can scarcely refrain from ex- 
claiming, in the language of the child song, " How 
I wonder what you are ! " The more he beholds it, 
studies it, measures it, the more the wonder grows. 
An old prophet who foresaw the advent of the 
Messiah said, " His name shall be called Wonder- 
ful." In our spiritual infancy we marveled at the 
wisdom of Jesus, and at every act that he per- 
formed in his great drama of redemption. We 
were amazed at his gentleness, meekness, forbear- 
ance, condescension, goodness, and mercy. After 
years of meditation upon these things, we realize 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 181 

that they have grown a thousand-fold more wonder- 
ful to our spiritual eyes. 

That little fixed star shining off yonder in the 
depths of space is an object of wonder, but if you 
should take wings and fly a few thousand times the 
distance of the earth from the sun nearer to it, how 
much greater it would seem to be than it now 
appears. There you could tarry and spend a life- 
time in studying features of it you never saw before. 
But suppose you were a million times that distance 
nearer to it than now, how would it impress you ? 
You would be so overwhelmed with the vastness 
and glory of it, that all earlier conceptions of it 
would vanish from your mind. 

As we " grow in grace and in the knowledge of 
our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ," he is magni- 
fied before our spiritual vision. The nearer we get 
to him by faith and love and fellowship, the more 
immeasurable and ineffable to our souls are the 
heights and depths of his adorable perfections. 

When Paul was in the flesh he was wont to write 
about the length and breadth and depth of the love 
of Christ. I wonder what he would write now, 
after a residence of eighteen hundred years in 
heaven ? In these earthly sanctuaries we listen with 
rapturous appreciation to the music of the old mas- 
ters which celebrates the birth of Jesus ; but who 
can conceive of the higher heights of song into 



182 THE STAK OF BETHLEHEM 

which their music-loving spirits soar to-day, as they 
stand in the immediate presence of the glorified 
Christ and look back to that advent scene in the 
manger of Bethlehem ? 

Jesus is compared to a star because he is the 
guide of his people. Some years ago, while on a 
hunting expedition with some friends, night over- 
took us in the depths of a pathless wilderness. We 
were lost, and the experience was an exceedingly 
sad one. After discussing our situation for some 
time, the leader of our party said, " Look for the 
north star." We did look for it, and soon found 
it ; and with that for our guide, we made our way 
out of the wilderness to the point from which 
we had started. How many a storm-tossed mariner 
has blessed God for the polar star ! Before the 
invention of the compass, how many a vessel, 
guided by that star, shunned the hidden rocks and 
dangerous coasts, outrode the tempest, and came 
safely into port. 

In the moral and spiritual world Christ is the 
infallible guide. To follow him is to walk in paths 
of pleasantness and peace. To be guided by him 
is to escape the wrath to come, to live in fellowship 
with God, and to secure for ourselves an eternal 
heritage of blessedness beyond the tomb. To 
make his will the law of our lives, is to attain to 
the noblest manhood, to enrich the generation in 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 183 

which we live, and to leave behind us a name and 
an influence that shall descend as a precious legacy 
to coming generations. 

Christ taught certain great ethical principles 
which should underlie all political government. 
Any nation whose government disregards these 
principles will sooner or later disintegrate and per- 
ish. That the government of this country is drift- 
ing farther and farther away from the eternal laws 
of rectitude embodied in Christ's Sermon on the 
Mount, is evident to every observant and thought- 
ful man among us. The supreme question with the 
average American legislator is not, What is right ? 
but, What is expedient? In his political creed 
there is no place for the Ten Commandments and 
the Golden Rule. 

To the guilty soul, conscious of its peril and 
wrestling with the question, " What must I do to 
be saved ? " Christ is the only infallible guide. 
He is " the Way, the Truth, and the Life." That is 
a truth as old as the hills; but to those of you 
who know it by actual experience it is eternally new 
and precious. 

Oh, where shall rest be found, 
Rest for the weary soul ? 

Some of you remember when these words ex- 
pressed the profoundest longing of your being. 



184 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 

You remember when you wandered everywhere in 
search of spiritual peace, and did not find it. You 
looked for it in science ; it was not there. You 
looked for it amid the mazes of human philosophy ; 
it was not there. You looked for it in the beauti- 
ful, in music and painting, in landscape loveliness 
and sunset halos ; it was not there. You turned 
your eyes within and looked for it in your own 
ruined nature ; it was not there. 

When you were on the verge of despair, when 
neither light nor comfort came from any source, 
and you felt that you were of all men most miser- 
able, you heard through some messenger of God 
the words of the pitying Christ : " Come unto me, 
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest." 

You hearkened to his voice ; you came into his 
presence weary, and worn, and sad, and looking up 
into his face with aspirations which your own poor 
words could not express, you simply said, " Lord, 
help me," and in response to this plea, the blessed 
Saviour looked upon you, and there came into your 
life, for the first time, the light and bliss for which 
you sighed. 

Christ is called the Morning Star because he is 
the forerunner of peace and joy. He is like the 
orb which heralded to the wise men of the East his 
own coming into the world. 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 185 

My friend, has Christ come to you ? If he has, 
put on the garment of praise and lift up your voice 
in a song of triumph, because his coming means 
cleansing, pardon, freedom, resurrection, ascension, 
coronation, and everlasting life in that better land 
where " eternal day excludes the night and pleas- 
ures banish pain." 

Has he come to your family ? Has he bestowed 
upon your sons and daughters the spirit of adop- 
tion ? If he has, domestic purity, tranquillity, and 
happiness here and everlasting reunion in " the 
land that is fairer than day," shall be the portion of 
your cup. 

When Jesus was born the angels sang, " On 
earth peace, good will toward men." That was a 
prophecy of the glory that shall be revealed in the 
latter day, when all nations shall bow before him ; 
when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, 
when wars shall cease from pole to pole, and every 
man shall love his neighbor as himself. 

In most of us, Christmas will serve to revive 
many tender memories, memories that will " bring 
the light of other days around us." It is a time 
when tears will come even amid scenes of gayety 
and mirth. Our eyes fall upon some object in the 
household which reminds us of loved ones vanished 
out of sight. It may be a picture on the wall ; it 
may be a book ; it may be an old family clock ; it 



186 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 

may be our mother's chair. Long live the name of 
that gifted woman who wrote "The Old Arm 
Chair »■: 

I love it, I love it, and who shall dare 

To chide me, for loving the old arm chair ? 

I've treasured it long as a sainted prize, 

I've bedewed it with tears and embalmed it with sighs. 

'Tis bound by a thousand bands to my heart ; 

Not a tie will break, not a link will start. 

Would you learn the spell ? A mother sat there ; 

And a sacred thing is that old arm chair. 

In childhood's hour I lingered near 

The hallowed seat with list'ning ear ; 

And the gentle words that mother would give, 

To fit me to die and teach me to live ! 

She told me that shame would never betide, 

With truth for my creed and God for my guide ; 

She taught me to lisp my earliest prayer, 

As I knelt beside that old arm chair. 

I sat and watched her many a day, 

When her eyes were dim and her locks were gray ; 

And I almost worshiped her when she smiled, 

And turned from the Bible to bless her child. 

Years rolled on, but at last one sped — 

My idol was shattered — my earth-star fled ; 

I learned how much the heart can bear, 

When I saw her die in that old arm chair. 

'Tis past ! 'Tis past ! But I gaze on it now, 
With quivering breath and throbbing brow ; 
'Twas there she nursed me ; 'twas there she died ; 
And memory flows with a lava tide. 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 187 

Say it is folly and deem me weak, 
While the scalding tears run down my cheek ; 
But I love it, I love it, and cannot tear 
My soul from my mother's old arm chair. 

It may not be your mother's chair, but your 
father's Bible, that has turned your thoughts back- 
ward to the old homestead and the scenes of your 
childhood. That old faded book, from which he 
was wont to read the sweet promises of God ere he 
bowed his knees to commend his household to the 
Lord's guiding and keeping care, will be to you the 
most precious of all the books. That book w T as the 
companion of your father's best and holiest hours. 
It was that which made him the saintly man he 
was. As his steps tottered in the advancing pil- 
grimage of life, and his eyes grew dim with age, 
dearer and dearer to him were the well-worn pages 
of that ancient book. One morning, just as the 
stars were fading into the dawn of a beautiful 
and serene Sabbath, the aged pilgrim passed on 
beyond the stars and beyond the morning, and en- 
tered into " the rest that remaineth to the people 
of God." 

But, beloved, when we have looked back and 
shed tears of affection for the dear ones gone from 
the circle of home, let us look forward and upward, 
where he whose birth we celebrate to-day has gone 
to prepare for us a resting-place, a place 



188 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 

Where those who meet shall part no more, 
And those long parted meet again. 

Let us look above to the realm where the rain- 
bow never fadeth, where the flowers never wither, 
where the fountains never cease to flow, and where 
beauty smiles eternally, and pleasure never dies. 



XIV 

THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE 
BAPTIST 



"Among them that are born of women there hath not 
risen a greater than John the Baptist." Matt. 11 : 11. 

The wisest man on earth is liable to mislead us 
in estimating the character and worth of another ; 
but Jesus Christ, who was too wise to err and too 
holy to deceive, could not mislead us. He has 
placed John the Baptist on the loftiest pinnacle of 
human greatness. Every well-meaning and virtuous 
person to whom I speak to-day aspires to greatness ; 
but your aspirations are worthless unless you have 
right conceptions of greatness. How blest we are 
in having before us on these sacred pages a model 
of greatness which has the unqualified endorsement 
of the highest wisdom of the universe ! 

Let us bring to the study of this great man the 
inspiration of a virtuous ambition. Let us see if 
there was not something in him which we may re- 
produce in ourselves. Let us at least determine to 
so truly comprehend this divinely approved model 

189 



190 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 

that hereafter we may know greatness when we 
see it. 

In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, when the 
universal Jewish heart was aflame with hatred of 
Roman tyranny and with desire of deliverance from 
it, when the voice of no living prophet had been heard 
during a period of four hundred and fifty years, when 
religion existed only in forms that were as dead as 
the grave, when the despotism and cruelty of civil 
governors were equaled only by the hypocrisies and 
vices of the priests of the temple and synagogue, 
just six months before the manifestation of the 
Saviour of the world, this strange, stalwart preacher 
came forth from a mountain wilderness, and in a 
voice that vibrated the air like the blast of a brazen 
trumpet, exclaimed, " Repent ye, for the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand." 

Let us consider first the essential elements of 
John's greatness. He was great in everything 
which enters into real manhood. 

Physically he had the vitality, vigor, and strength 
of an athlete. He had kept himself as pure as the 
air he breathed. His manly form was untouched 
by vice. He knew not the taste of any food which 
men call luxury. His great iron will was master of 
every appetite and impulse of his animal nature. 
He had spent years in developing his physical con- 
stitution under the most favorable conditions. He 



THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 191 

had strengthened his limbs and hardened his mus- 
cles by climbing steep and rugged mountains. He 
had expanded his lungs and enriched his blood by 
inhaling freely the purest mountain atmosphere. 
He had disciplined his voice until it was deep as 
distant thunder and shrill and clear as the bugle's 
blast. To a man who is called to lead in any great 
reformation, nothing is more essential than a physi- 
cal constitution of exceptional strength and endur- 
ance. He needs it for self-protection when some 
ruffian opposes his argument with a club. Without 
it he is in danger of prostration and collapse at times 
when his presence and voice are most needed. 

What would have become of that great reforma- 
tion immediately preceding the manifestation of 
Christ if its success had depended upon a man of 
ordinary physical capacity? In that mighty relig- 
ious movement which convulsed and subdued all 
"Jerusalem, Judea, and the region round about 
Jordan/' there was but one person to preach and 
baptize. Who but a man of John's bodily strength 
and toughness could have endured the strain ? Oh, 
that there were more muscularity in the manhood 
of the Christian ministry of our day ! 

John was intellectually great. Nature endowed 
him with faculties which, when developed, were ca- 
pable of gigantic feats. It is apparent that his 
mind was superbly disciplined and stored with 



192 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 

knowledge. He had evidently acquired all the 
learning of the most cultured classes of the Jews. 
The whole history of Israel, and the wisdom of her 
patriarchs, rulers, and prophets were as familiar to 
him as the alphabet of the language he spoke. 

He had spent not less than twenty-five years in 
preparing himself for a ministry that lasted but 
little more than six months. The greatest work of 
every man who truly enriches the world is his prepa- 
ration for service. If I had only seven days more 
of life I would spend six of them in study and 
prayer and the other in preaching the everlasting 
gospel. In God's vineyard it is not the amount of 
labor performed by his servants, but the quality of 
it that tells upon the characters and destinies of 
men. 

To such knowledge as John had acquired from 
communion with books he added the fruits of many 
years of original thinking. Under the stimulus of 
the inspiring scenery about him and the electrify- 
ing grandeur of the sacred and momentous mission 
for which he was fitting himself, his naturally great 
mind penetrated and mastered problems untouched 
by any of his illustrious predecessors. I suppose it 
was his unrivaled originality of thought and speech 
that Jesus referred to when he said that John was 
" more than a prophet." 

He was great in tender, generous, and noble 



THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 193 

affections. In some of the old paintings he has the 
appearance of a wild, fierce, vindictive, selfish, and 
savage man. This conception is grossly erroneous 
and unjust. While he had the courage of a lion, he 
was as tender as a woman. Unconquerable and un- 
yielding in his purposes, he was also as humble and 
teachable as a child. In the zenith of his power 
and fame we hear him speaking of One to come 
after him the latchet of whose shoes he was un- 
worthy to unloose. 

He was great in his spiritual development. He 
endured and labored " as seeing him who is invisi- 
ble." To him God was an ever-present reality. He 
saw him in all the shifting panorama of earth and 
sky. He heard his voice in the roaring wrath of 
every passing storm and in the cheerful notes of 
every singing bird. He felt his power in the shock 
of every earthquake and in every quiet pulsation of 
his own heart. Disciplined into the most exquisite 
sensibility to spiritual things, he recognized the 
presence of the Saviour at the Jordan before his 
natural eyes had beheld him. You remember that 
he said to the multitude gathered there, " There 
standeth one among you, whom ye know not." 

To these attributes and attainments of his physical, 
intellectual, and spiritual nature were superadded in 
a pre-eminent degree, the influences of the Holy 
Spirit. His whole spiritual being was divinely in- 

N 



194 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 

habited, divinely illumined, and divinely empowered. 
This gave the crowning glory to his manhood. It 
was this that enabled him to come to his difficult 
work with more than the power and spirit of Elijah. 

John the Baptist was a man, in the highest sense, 
before he was a preacher. This is God's order, and 
our disregard of it has let into the pulpit thousands 
of ecclesiastical parvenus, dudes, and dead-beats. 

You cannot build a palace out of straw. You 
cannot paint a great and enduring picture with mud. 
You cannot develop a toad into a nightingale, nor a 
snail into a race horse. It takes something more 
than a mere human biped to make a jurist, or a 
statesman, or a preacher. It takes a man. That 
creature on the bench who like necessity knows no 
law, or who, if he knows it, is morally incapable of 
an impartial administration of it, is not a judge. 
Why ? Because he is not a man. That individual 
who goes to the ballot box and votes for what he 
knows to be an unpatriotic and unrighteous measure, 
is not an American citizen. Why ? Because he is 
not a man. He is a mere chattel that is always 
ready to be put on the market and sold. 

That something up there in the pulpit, in clerical 
attire of the most approved and conventional pat- 
tern, that mild-mannered, soft-toned, and timid 
creature, who straddles every question that agitates 
the community and who makes no issue with the 



THE GKEATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 195 

forces of evil, is not a preacher. He is no mouth- 
piece for God. Why ? Because he is destitute of 
the most essential elements of true manhood. He 
is a mere pulpit automaton or weathercock, whose 
movements are directed by those from whom he 
receives his pay. 

Let us consider, in the next place, some of the 
exhibitions of John's greatness. 

His greatness was seen in his manifest indiffer- 
ence to the voice of detraction and calumny. He 
came to the work of preaching unheralded and un- 
known. Obscure in his origin, a denizen of the 
wilderness, untaught by the doctors of the law, what 
claims had he as a public teacher of men ? That 
he was sneered at is implied in a question which 
Jesus put to the multitude, " What went ye out into 
the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the 
wind ? " That evidently was their first conception 
of John. They regarded him as a mere upstart, a 
breeder of cheap sensations, a fluttering thing in the 
air that would soon exhaust itself and disappear. 

We infer from another question which Jesus 
asked them, that they had done more than sneer at 
the wilderness preacher. They had maliciously 
slandered him. They had charged him with work- 
ing for selfish ends. " What went ye out for to 
see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold 
they that wear soft clothing are in king's houses." 



196 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 

John was unmoved and undisturbed by these 
foolish and slanderous criticisms. Conscious of his 
strength and the rectitude of his motives, he con- 
tinued to declare the message of God to the people, 
" Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 

From still another question propounded by our 
Lord to the same multitude, we infer that John's 
critics finally changed their minds. " But what 
went ye out for to see ? A prophet ? Yea, I say 
unto you, and more than a prophet." This, my 
friends, is substantially the history of every true 
reformer in religion, or philosophy, or science, or 
politics. He is at first looked upon as an upstart, a 
maker of cheap notoriety, a sensation that will live 
only for a day. By and by those who have laughed 
at him will become serious. Yes, they will get mad, 
and say, " He is a rascal. He is morally rotten. 
He is working for money, or office." Still later, 
when they see that they have accomplished nothing 
by their unrighteous abuse, they get over their 
madness, and say, "Well, is he not a prophet in- 
deed ! Yea, he is more than a prophet. We never 
saw his equal." 

O ye prophets, ye reformers, ye men of real merit 
and high resolves, destined to power and fame, do 
not be afraid of your traducers. Do not be fright- 
ened by the newspapers. They will belittle you 
to-day and magnify you to-morrow. They will 



THE GKEATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 197 

curse you to-day and crown you to-morrow. They 
called Napoleon a pretender, a Corsican, and a thief, 
but, a little later, they put the imperial coronet on 
his brow and shouted, " Long live Napoleon ! " 

If your cause is just, your motive pure, and you 
are conscious of capacity to compass the object you 
have in view, do not fear the critics. Hold on, 
John the Baptist ! Let your truth-proclaiming 
voice ring out in trumpet tones through all the wil- 
derness of error and corruption, and by and by the 
critics will cease their fruitless carpings, and from 
every housetop proclaim you " a prophet, and more 
than a prophet." 

John's greatness was felt in the attractive and 
transforming pow T er of his preaching. The people 
who heard him were shaken as by an earthquake. 
The scales fell from their eyes, and in deep peni- 
tence of soul they were baptized in Jordan confess- 
ing their sins. Every new trophy of his pow T er was 
"a fresh evangel of his fame." Tidings of the 
preacher and his work were carried from Jordan to 
Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem to every nook and 
corner of Judea. Soon every highway and path was 
thronged with pilgrims, pressing on with eager and 
impatient desire to see and hear this mighty prophet 
of God, whose w 7 onderful words were reviving the 
dead hopes of a people from whose temple the She- 
kinah had disappeared, and upon whose necks the 



198 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 

galling yoke of Roman despotism seemed to be riv- 
eted forever. 

In modern parlance, John's preaching would be 
called " sensational." It was sensational, and yet 
in every particular it was legitimate preaching. In 
every act of his wonder-working ministry he was 
obedient to the will of God. He said and did only 
what he was divinely commissioned to say and do. 

He held with unflinching fealty to the task which 
he was appointed to perform, the preparation of a 
people for the Lord. The sensation attending his 
ministry resulted from no studied eccentricity of 
manner, or impassioned appeals to the prejudices of 
men, but from the nature of the message which he 
bore, and the deep earnestness with which he ap- 
plied it to the hearts and consciences of his auditors. 

Martin Luther was sensational, but who will say 
that he was unlawfully so? How could such a 
man, acting in a crisis so momentous, and speaking 
for a cause so transcendently great, avoid sensation? 
Chrysostom, Savonarola, Knox, and Whitefield 
were sensational ; and so are all the men of our 
day who are wise, consecrated, and successful lead- 
ers of spiritual warfare. 

John's greatness was seen again in the righteous 
audacity and dauntless courage with which he 
smote iniquity in high places. When the religious 
aristocracy, which constituted the high-church party 



THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 199 

of Judea, came out to hear him, they supposed that 
he would be profoundly impressed by the compli- 
ment which their presence bestowed upon him. 
They imagined that he would recognize in a befit- 
ting manner their condescending kindness, that he 
would repay them by giving them reserved seats, 
and by telling them that they were too refined, holy, 
and exalted, to be touched by the vulgar common 
people, and by the unwashed and uncircumcised 
sinners gathered about them. 

They were sorely disappointed. Seeing their 
pride, insincerity, and hypocrisy, knowing how 
they were attempting to conceal by a robe of 
sanctity the dishonesty and sensuality of their lives, 
he assailed them with a righteous fury that was 
simply appalling. "O generation of vipers, who 
hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come ? 
Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abra- 
ham to our father, for I say unto you that God is 
able of these stones to raise up children unto Abra- 
ham." 

The veriest coward and time-server who has 
" stolen the livery of the court of heaven to serve 
the devil in," can rebuke the sins and vices of the 
poor and obscure of his community ; but to face the 
dwellers in mansions, the wearers of soft raiment, 
the social and religious aristocracy, who claim a 
monopoly of intelligence, refinement, respectability, 



200 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 

and virtue, and tell them of their sins and their 
vices and their shams, and paint the horrors of the 
pit into which their feet are sliding, is a task which 
requires the faith, courage, and strength of a spirit- 
ual athlete. 

John the Baptist was a Christian radical. To say 
that of any man is to pay the very highest tribute 
to his personal character. He laid the axe to the 
root of the tree saying, " Every tree that bringeth 
not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the 
fire." Sometimes he arraigned whole classes of men, 
uncovered their iniquities, and foretold their doom. 
At other times he pointed to some individual sinner, 
unmasked him, and held up his deeds of darkness 
to public reprobation and scorn. Inspired by the 
consciousness that he was the oracle of the living 
God, and regardless of consequences to himself, he 
dared to confront the royal Herod, who had Roman 
legions at his back, and solemnly rebuke him for his 
adulterous connection with the wife of his own living 
brother. 

If a man is inherently great God will not let 
him die until he has had some opportunity to show 
it. Demosthenes had his opportunity. When he 
entered the arena of public affairs in Athens the 
State was a wreck ; public virtue was at the lowest 
ebb ; the laws had lost their authority ; the austerity 
of the earlier manhood had yielded to the inroads of 



THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 201 

luxury ; activity had succumbed to indolence, and 
probity to venality. Of all the virtues of their fore- 
fathers there remained to the Athenians naught save 
an enthusiastic attachment to their native soil, a pas- 
sionate and undying affection for a country the pos- 
session of which even the gods had contested. 

It was in exciting and intensifying this feeling 
that Demosthenes climbed to the pinnacle of ora- 
torical fame. He knew the ambitious designs of 
Philip of Macedon. He felt that there was but one 
hope for Athens, and that was in war. This was the 
one theme of his orations and the one object of his 
public career — war, war with Philip, the Macedo- 
nian despot and robber, and for the space of fourteen 
years did the matchless eloquence of the Athenian 
orator obstruct the path of the Macedonian con- 
queror. 

Cicero had his opportunity in the conspiracy of 
Catiline, and wisely and grandly did he use it. 
Chrysostom had his opportunity when they at- 
tempted to banish him for preaching against the 
licentiousness of the priesthood and the corruptions 
of the court, and so well did he improve it that the 
world has applauded him ever since. 

Patrick Henry had his opportunity when the re- 
peated outrages of British tyranny made it necessary 
to kindle the fires of revolution throughout the Amer- 
ican Colonies, and so well did he use it that posterity 



202 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 

will never cease to call him "The forest-born De- 
mosthenes." 

But " among them that are born of women there 
hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist." 
That implies that no man ever used more faithfully, 
wisely, and successfully the opportunities of his life. 

Sometimes we find in a man possessed of that ag- 
gressive, impetuous, and vehement spirit so conspicu- 
ous in John, a fatal lack of the softer and milder 
virtues. No man is truly great who is selfish, en- 
vious, harsh, and vindictive. No man is great 
without a good degree of tenderness, pity, modesty, 
and humility. Every intelligent reader of the New 
Testament must admit that John had these gentler 
virtues in a pre-eminent degree. 

In the eyes of that admiring throng gathered on 
the banks of the Jordan, John the Baptist was in- 
comparably greater than any man of his day. But 
hear him compare himself with another. "One 
mightier thanT cometh, the latchet of whose shoes 
I am not worthy to unloose." 

Picture to your minds, if you can, another scene. 
Standing before that admiring multitude, he points 
with his right hand toward a Galilean stranger, and 
in a voice heavy with the profoundest emotion, utters 
that exclamation which generations and centuries 
had listened in vain to hear : " Behold the Lamb 
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world ! " 



THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 203 

But how amazement deepens as that stranger, 
that divine being, God's Messiah, approaches John 
and asks for baptism at his hands. See the great 
preacher's head droop and his eyes grow dim with 
tears. Hear his voice break with emotion as he 
responds : " I have need to be baptized of thee, and 
comest thou to me?" Who can look upon that 
picture and think that John the Baptist was lacking 
in tenderness or modesty or humility ? 

This great man closed his earthly career in a 
Roman dungeon. Amid the darkness and dreariness 
of that place he had a brief season of weakness, if 
to doubt be always a sign of weakness. Surely if a 
servant of God ever had cause to doubt John had it 
during his confinement in that prison. 

Material environment has much to do with our 
mental conditions. There is a subtle mystery about 
atmospheric influences. There are points in space 
at which we can receive no temptation. There are 
other points which seem to be heir's favorite battle- 
fields. That Roman jail was a favorable place for 
infernal visitations. A man cannot see far in a 
prison light. He cannot see much with dungeon 
walls for a horizon. There is not much poetry 
in a loathsome, vermin-breeding cell. Those mass- 
ive stone walls, barred windows, iron doors, and 
stern, sullen Roman sentinels, w T ere not fruitful of 
holy and comforting suggestion. 



204 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 

Why is John the Baptist in such a place ? He 
has committed no crime ; he has violated no law. 
Why is he there ? He is there " for the word of 
God and the testimony of Jesus." The iron hand 
of guilty power is upon him because he dared to 
rebuke the king for his foul and incestuous mar- 
riage. It must have seemed strange indeed to him, 
that God would permit a servant so innocent and 
faithful to endure such treatment. Two other facts 
helped him to doubt. One was that the multitude 
of people who once crowded around him, admired 
and applauded him, had forgotten him. The other 
was that Jesus, whom he heralded and baptized, 
had never been near him, or even inquired after 
him, during all the dreary days of his incarceration 
and suffering. These circumstances conspired to 
depress John's mind to the point where he could 
entertain doubts in reference to the character and 
mission of Jesus. 

But his doubts were short-lived. Calling to him 
two of the few disciples who had clung to him in 
his distress, he told them to go directly to the Mas- 
ter with this question : " Art thou he that should 
come, or do we look for another ? " They did as 
they were commanded, and the message which they 
brought back from their divine Lord removed the 
last doubt from the mind and heart of his imprisoned 
servant. 



THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 205 

Soon after this the end came. It was tragic, 
bloody, horrible ; and yet for him it was glorious. 
Committing his soul for the last time into the hands 
of his Heavenly Father, without a tremor, supremely 
calm in the assurance that death for him would be 
only transition from gloom to glory, he received the 
murderous blow which severed his head from his 
body. 

While the crimson tide of life ran over that dun- 
geon floor, and the poor, ghastly, gory head was 
borne in a vessel to Herod's palace, his freed spirit, 
unharmed, untouched, peaceful, radiant, triumph- 
ant, sped upward to its eternal dwelling-place in 
the sheltering bosom of God. 

Farewell, great prophet. Thou hast left the 
world laden with the benedictions of grateful hearts. 
Thy blood is an imperishable seed from which, in 
every age, a harvest of heroes and martyrs shall 
spring. The echoes of that voice crying in the 
wilderness, " Prepare ye the way of the Lord," 
shall live until this wilderness world has become 
the kingdom of Christ. 

Friends, if there be men among us who approxi- 
mate, in any good degree, the lofty ideal to which I 
have directed your thoughts this morning, honor 
them, love them, magnify them, crown them, for 
they are the hope of your country and the world. 

If a pure gospel is to be preached ; if spiritual 



206 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 

religion is to be preserved j if the macadamized 
bigotry of modern Phariseeism is to be pulverized 
and destroyed ; if the soul-degrading infidelity of 
Ingersoll and his satellites is to be smitten with 
deadly blows ; if communism, socialism, free-love- 
ism, new-womanism, and all their kindred evils are 
to be uprooted from American soil : if this disgrace- 
ful travesty upon democratic government is ever 
stopped ; if ballot-box stuffing, false registration, 
and bribery, now practised under the eyes and with 
the approval of men who claim to be patriots and 
Christians, are ever abolished ; if the despotism of 
monopoly and privileged classes is ever to be over- 
thrown ; if we are ever to repeal those infamous 
laws which are golden girdles to one class and gall- 
ing shackles for another ; if the power of the 
whisky ring is ever broken, so that men can be 
elected to a city council, or to a State legislature, 
without taking an oath of fealty to the barkeepers ; 
if the church of the living God is ever to be 
cleansed of her defilements and made w T orthy to be 
called the bride of Christ ; if these reforms are pos- 
sible, they are made possible only through the dar- 
ing and deathless devotion of the few, who are 
dominated by the same spirit and purposes which 
made John the Baptist the matchless man and the 
peerless prophet that he was. 



XV 
JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 



" Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own 
place." Acts 1 : 25. 

Of all the pictures of the final condition of the 
wicked, Dante's "Inferno" is the blackest and 
most terrible. In "the place of outer darkness" 
he sees everything that can contribute to the 
torture of damned spirits. After making the 
whole circuit of that vast realm of uncleanness 
and anguish, he comes at last to the bottom of the 
nethermost pit. There he finds the worst class of 
sinners wailing and howling with nameless agony. 
Chief among them is Satan ; and next to him in 
guilt and woe is Judas Iscariot. 

Dante represented the Roman Catholic theology 
of the Middle Ages, a conspicuous feature of which 
was the doctrine of a hell of material fire — a hell 
in which betrayers of Christ and his people are the 
chief sufferers. 

In our day opinion is swinging toward the oppo- 
site extreme. The tendency is not only to reject 

207 



208 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 

the material features of the medieval hell, but to re- 
duce sin to a mere imperfection rendered unavoida- 
ble by our environment, and future punishment to 
such pains as are incident to wholesome discipline 
and preparation for a higher and happier state. To 
men who hold to such views nothing appears to be 
very bad. The hypocrites, adulterers, thieves, ty- 
rants, and murderers who have received the world's 
reprobation, were grossly misunderstood, and were 
much better men at heart than those who judged 
and condemned them. They say that Judas Iscariot 
was not a criminal, but a hero. What seems to us 
a betrayal of Jesus was in reality an act of friend- 
ship, and what appears to be damnable hypocrisy 
was simply a mistaken method by which Judas at- 
tempted to accomplish a great and holy purpose. 

These apologists and defenders of the arch-traitor 
would have us believe that for more than eighteen 
centuries the world has wronged him by charging 
that it was for money that he betrayed Jesus to his 
enemies. They say that the smallness of the sum — 
only about fifteen dollars in our money — proves that 
he must have had another and a stronger motive. 

They declare also that Judas' conception of the 
character and mission of Christ did not differ from 
that of the other apostles. All of them believed 
him to be the divine Messiah promised in the Jewish 
Scriptures. They believed that he had come to re- 



JUDAS, THE TKAITOR 209 

store the kingdom of Israel, and that he would soon 
sit upon the throne once occupied by David. The 
only difference between Judas and his brother apos- 
tles was that he was more impatient than they. 
They trusted Jesus to choose the right time and the 
right means for the organization of his kingdom, 
while Judas thought that his delay was unwise and 
unwarranted. He was disappointed in the Master. 
He thought that he was lacking in energy and prac- 
ticality ; he was too spiritual and unworldly to be a 
successful schemer and leader in a great and perilous 
political movement ; he allowed golden opportunities 
to pass unimproved ; his delay had caused the lead- 
ing men among the Jews to believe that he was des- 
titute of the wisdom and courage requisite to success. 

Judas was not only disappointed, but indignant, 
because Jesus did not proclaim himself king when 
he was the idol of the populace and could have 
commanded them for any purpose. He knew that 
Jesus was invested with divine power. He had seen 
him heal the sick, cast out devils, quell the storm, 
and raise the dead. He knew that by the exercise 
of the same power he could crush all opposition and 
make himself the world's greatest king. His pur- 
pose in betraying him was to compel him to use 
that power. He intended to bring things to a crisis. 

He knew that the chief priests and elders were 
eagerly watching for an opportunity to destroy 



210 

Jesus. He thought that by betraying him into 
their hands he would put him in a situation that 
would make it necessary for him to assert his king- 
ship and exercise his divine power. Inspired by 
this motive, he regarded his treachery as an exhibi- 
tion of the loftiest virtue, and expected Jesus to re- 
ward him for it as soon as he ascended the throne. 

The apologists of Judas contend that he meant 
well from beginning to end, but that he was unwise 
in the choice of his methods. They say too, that 
the intensity of his sorrow over his mistake and over 
the death of the innocent Christ demonstrates that 
he was not a man of bad heart. 

This I believe to be an impartial statement of the 
position of moderate defenders of Judas Iscariot. 
It is a position that cannot be maintained. It is 
unsupported either by revelation or reason. There 
is not an allusion to Judas in the sacred Scriptures 
which furnishes the slightest foundation for the be- 
lief that he was a man of good motives. Upon their 
testimony we are compelled to believe that it was 
for " thirty pieces of silver " that he betrayed his 
Lord. John branded him as a thief. He brought 
this indictment because he believed that Judas had 
appropriated to his own purposes a part of the 
"poor fund" with which he had been entrusted. 
There are a great many kinds of thieves ; but the 
most degraded and contemptible of them all is the 



JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 211 

one that steals from a charity fund. He is meaner 
than the wretch who exhumes a coffin and robs a 
dead body of its winding sheet. 

How can we doubt that the treachery of this man 
was inspired by the love of money, when it stands 
upon the sacred record that he went to the chief 
priests and said, " What will ye give me ? " He 
made a specific bargain with them to betray the 
Master into their hands, and the only compensation 
that he demanded for his infamous service and the 
only compensation that he received was money — 
" thirty pieces of silver." 

Chronologists place the miracle of feeding the 
multitude with the few loaves and fishes just one 
year before the crucifixion. That miracle made 
Jesus so popular that the people were about to lay 
hands upon him and compel him to be their king. 
But when he rebuked them and began to preach to 
them about spiritual food, many of them went away 
and walked with him no more. It was at that time 
that Jesus gave the first hint concerning the real 
character of Judas. "Have not I chosen you 
twelve, and one of you is a devil ? " I think it was 
then that Judas began to steal from the bag contain- 
ing the charity money. 

It is certain that he began to follow Christ with 
the expectation of material reward. He had left a 
good business to become an apostle. He thought 



212 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 

that he deserved some compensation for his trouble 
and sacrifice. What he was taking from the poor 
fund was much less than he could have made at 
his old business, and much less than he deserved. 
I suppose that these were about the excuses which 
Judas made to his conscience as he began his down- 
ward career. 

From certain brief utterances, dropped at inter- 
vals, Judas suspected that Jesus knew that he was a 
thief. With the birth of this suspicion he began to 
dislike the Master. 

As long as a bad man can conceal his meanness 
from you he is not apt to be hostile toward you ; 
but when he discovers that you are cognizant of his 
bad character and iniquitous deeds he begins to hate 
you and to seek opportunities to inflict injuries upon 
you. A distinguished gentleman in one of our 
Southern cities invited me to dine with him that he 
might have a favorable opportunity to assure me of 
his warm sympathy with my temperance principles 
and work. His protestations of fealty to me and to 
the cause with which I w T as somewhat conspicuously 
identified were very emphatic and impressive. A 
few months afterward I came unexpectedly upon 
that man just as he was emerging from a bar-room. 
For months he did not speak to me when we met. 
My accidental discovery of his hypocrisy made him 
my enemy. So it was with Judas. As long as he 



JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 213 

supposed Jesus to be ignorant of the baseness of his 
character he cherished for him no ill-feeling ; but 
when he realized that Jesus understood him thor- 
oughly, he hated him and was ready to seize the first 
opportunity to betray him. /* 

A corrupt man cannot long disguise his charac- 
ter. He will not go very far before he will betray 
himself either in word or deed. Judas unwittingly 
uncovered his knavish spirit at Bethany, when Mary 
broke the alabaster box and anointed our Lord with 
costly oil. That scene, so beautiful and tender to 
the other disciples, brought to the surface all that 
was mean and wicked in the heart of the traitor. 
" Why was not this ointment sold and given to the 
poor ? " This utterance of Judas was inspired by 
two feelings ; one was hostility to Jesus, and the 
other a craving to put more money into his purse. 
It angered him to see such a tribute bestowed upon 
one whom he hated and desired to destroy. It dis- 
tressed him because it had deprived him of another 
chance to steal. His words betrayed him. The 
apostles then saw what the Master had known from 
the beginning; and John, acting as spokesman for 
his brethren, said that Judas had protested against 
the conduct of Mary, " not that he cared for the 
poor, but because he was a thief and had the bag." 

We do not declare the whole truth concerning the 
conduct of Judas, when we say that it was for 



214 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 

money that he turned against Christ and betrayed 
him into the hands of his Jewish enemies. 

Judas was an intense Judean. He started out 
with the Judaic conception of the Messianic char- 
acter and mission of our Lord. When he discov- 
ered that Jesus had no thought of a temporal king- 
dom, and that he had no political offices and honors 
to bestow upon his followers, he was disgusted and 
angered, and determined that he would align him- 
self, at the proper time, with the enemies of the 
Master. He was angry too, because Jesus knew 
his iniquitous spirit and purposes. He wanted to 
get rid of him because his presence was exceedingly 
embarrassing. 

But while all this is true, I see no reason to 
doubt that the love of money, more than any other 
feeling, inspired Judas to betray our Lord. No 
other human passion is behind so many crimes as 
the love of money. Those who surrender them- 
selves to it constitute the very worst element of 
society. Nothing but the fear of the prison and 
the gallows keeps them from theft and murder. 
When this master lust took possession of the mind 
and heart of Judas he was prepared not only to 
steal the money of the poor, but to betray God's 
Messiah, and thus become a party to that infernal 
deed which makes the blackest page in the world's 
history. 



JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 215 

The modern apologists of Judas tell us that his 
repentance shows that he was not a thoroughly bad 
man. My reply to this is, that his repentance 
shows nothing more than that he had a conscience 
which lashed him most terribly for his stupendous 
crime. That is nothing in his favor, for the devil 
and his angels suffer in the same way. They are 
full of remorse for their folly in rebelling against 
God ; but they are devils still. For thousands of 
years they have been wailing under the pangs of 
conscience, but they are as rebellious against truth 
and God to-day as when they were first placed 
under the chains of everlasting darkness. 

It is true that Judas took the thirty pieces of sil- 
ver, which he had accepted as a bribe, back to the 
high priests, threw them down at their feet, and ex- 
claimed, " I have sinned, in that I have betrayed 
the innocent blood." It is evident that in this act 
he was moved by no higher and holier feeling than 
a desire to relieve his aching conscience. That 
money in his hands was a witness and a reminder 
of his terrible guilt. Every glittering coin was an 
eye through which infinite justice and holiness be- 
held his crime. The thirty pieces of silver were 
like so many tongues, crying to heaven for ven- 
geance upon the man w T ho had betrayed the Saviour 
of the world. He could no longer hold them, for 
their touch was like the sting of fire. 



216 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 

A man who is utterly destitute of the love of truth 
and virtue, can suffer remorse for his misdeeds. The 
most incurable criminals the world ever saw have 
died howling with remorse. What good thing did 
this traitor's aching conscience inspire him to do ? 
Did he follow the being whom he had so cruelly and 
infamously wronged into the court of the Jews and 
there fall at his feet, testify to his innocence, and 
implore his pardon in the presence of his accusers ? 
No. Did he follow him when they took him before 
Pilate and Herod, and plead for his release ? No. 
Did he intercede for him when they clothed him 
with mock royalty, spat in his face, and beat him 
with loaded thongs ? No. If he had gone with 
his confession of guilt to the innocent one against 
whom this sin was committed, and in the presence 
of judges and people had said, " Oh, my innocent 
Lord and Saviour, forgive me for this terrible 
wrong," methinks the gentle face of Jesus w r ould 
have forgotten its crown of thorns, and that those 
sacred lips which Judas had treacherously kissed, 
would have tenderly and lovingly said, " My poor 
heart-broken Judas, be of good cheer, weep no 
more ; thy sin is forgiven thee." 

More than from any other being, Jesus deserved 
public confession from the lips of Judas. If Judas 
was the man that his modern defenders claim that 
he was, he would have sought the victim of his 



217 

crime and in the presence of his accusers poured 
out his soul in penitential confession at his feet. If 
he had done this, Christ would have been as merci- 
ful to him as he was to the penitent thief on the 
cross. If he had done this, he would not stand to- 
day in the pillory of history as the meanest of man- 
kind. His repentance lacked the element which is 
most essential. He did not turn to God. True re- 
pentance is not the mere excitement and horror of 
a terrified conscience. It is bringing the guilty soul 
to God. It is sorrow looking up to the mercy of 
the infinite Father. 

The weakest argument in defense of Judas is 
based upon the fact that he committed suicide. It 
is claimed that he destroyed himself to emphasize 
before the world his own condemnation of the 
wrong he had done, and to repair, as far as possible, 
the mischief resulting from his treacherous deed. 

Now the truth is that this last act of Judas was 
unmitigated selfishness. It was inspired only by 
a desire to escape from suffering. He leaped into 
the arms of death hoping to find in them the angel 
of relief. 

One of the most despicable products of this age 
is a sentiment which invests suicide with a glamour 
of romance and lauds it as an exhibition of heroic 
courage. No harsh words should be spoken of in- 
sane persons who take their own lives ; but where 



218 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 

there is no insanity it is the most cowardly act of 
which a human being is capable. The man who de- 
liberately takes his own life knows that by so doing 
he leaves a heritage of shame to his family. What 
could be meaner than that ? The man who commits 
suicide knows that by so doing he is laying his bur- 
dens on other shoulders. What could be more ig- 
noble? A merchant becomes bankrupt, and to 
escape the labor and struggle of rebuilding his for- 
tune he puts a pistol to his head and blows his 
brains out. He knows that by that act he will dis- 
grace his wife and children, fill their hearts with 
incurable grief, and doom them to a lifelong strug- 
gle with poverty. Such a man is the meanest of 
cowards, and his grave should be epitaphed with the 
world's contempt. 

The suicide not only deserts the post of duty and 
all of his obligations to his family, neighborhood, 
and country, but he practically denies the existence 
of God. Can one who believes that he will meet 
the Almighty in the other world dare, in this dis- 
orderly way, to rush into his presence ? 

It is a significant fact that the " thirty pieces of 
silver " for which Judas betrayed Christ were used 
to purchase a burying ground for criminals, and 
that he, the arch-traitor, the world's blackest villain, 
was the first criminal that was buried there. The 
" Field of Blood," purchased by the price of infamy, 



JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 219 

is the melancholy monument to the memory of the 
betrayer of Jesus Christ. " He fell that he might 
go to his own place." The doctrine of the Bible 
concerning the state of the wicked in the future 
world is in perfect harmony with natural law. 
Nothing that men believe has a better rational 
foundation. 

About twenty years ago I went over from New 
York to Brooklyn in the afternoon of a summer's 
day to witness a contest between two baseball teams. 
Before the play began I noticed about a hundred 
men confined in a pen that was separated by a high 
wall from the terraced seats occupied by the main 
body of spectators. I asked a friend sitting near 
who those men were and why they were confined 
in that pen. He informed me that they were 
gamblers ; that they were there to bet on the game, 
and that the law required them to keep to them- 
selves. 

It at once occurred to me that that was a very 
reasonable, wise, and just law. Birds of a feather 
must flock together. Let gamblers go by them- 
selves. It is not only unnatural, but embarrassing 
for them to sit down with honest men. It is still 
more afflictive to pure-minded men and women to 
be brought into immediate contact with characters 
so vile and loathsome. 

The doctrine of the future life is founded upon 



220 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 

the same principle which underlies that New York 
law. In the world to come every man will gravitate 
u to his own place." In death there is no trans- 
formation of character. If you are corrupt in this 
world you will be corrupt in the next. " What- 
soever a man soweth that shall he also reap." This 
life is the sowing time and the next will be harvest. 

In the future state you will go into a moral at- 
mosphere in keeping with your own moral character. 
By a law which inheres in its own being everything 
will seek its kind. Every soul will rise or sink to 
its own place. Liars must to liars go, drunkards to 
drunkards, whoremongers to whoremongers, tyrants 
to tyrants, thieves to thieves, murderers to mur- 
derers, and traitors to traitors. This is the eternal 
and immutable decree of the God of the universe. 

Jesus said to his disciples, " I go to prepare a 
place for you." Followers of the Lamb, toilers in 
the vineyard of the Lord, soldiers of the sacramental 
host — all ye who bear the burden and heat of the 
day and serve your generation according to the will 
of God, rejoice in the assurance that there is a place 
which your loving Lord has prepared for you. It 
is a place where nothing entereth that defileth or 
maketh a lie ; where " the wicked cease from trou- 
bling, and the weary be at rest," and where the 
pure in heart shall see God. 

My friend, my neighbor, let me, in concluding 



JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 221 

this discussion, make it as practical as possible for 
you. Let me put this question to your conscience : 
To what place in the next world are you going ? 
In the light of divine truth study your heart and 
consider your ways, and you cannot fail to discover 
whither you are drifting. 

Lord God of truth and grace, teach us, cleanse 
our souls, discipline our lives, and guide our foot- 
steps, that we may go to the place where thou art 
and from which the glory of thy presence shall 
never depart. 



XVI 

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN 
RELIGION 



" Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk 
therein." Jer. 6 : 16. 

In this chapter the prophet bewails the wander- 
ings of the Jews from the ways of truth and right- 
eousness, and exhorts them to return to the "old 
paths." The corruption of their faith had resulted 
in a corresponding corruption of their morals. 
This degeneracy was universal. The prophet says : 
" From the least of them even unto the greatest of 
them, every one is given to covetousness ; and from 
the prophet even unto the priest, every one dealeth 
falsely." Holding this picture of their wretched 
condition before them, he exhorts them to repent 
and get back into the old paths of truth and virtue. 

You will readily concede that the same exhorta- 
tion might be very appropriately delivered to the 
present generation. We are living in an age in 
which there is a fierce conflict between the old and 
the new. This conflict is not confined to things 
222 



THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 223 

temporal, but extends into the realm of religion. 
In the churches of the Lord Jesus there are men 
who are attempting to lead us away from the faith 
and practice of our fathers, and to commit us to a 
view of Christianity which contradicts every great 
fundamental doctrine of the Bible. 

Many of these men do not deny the past effi- 
ciency of the old faith. They admit that it has been 
a blessing to the world, but contend that we have 
reached a period of development when it can be no 
longer serviceable. They tell us that the historic 
Christ must give place to the ideal Christ, the ob- 
jective to the subjective Christ, and the personal to 
the imaginary Christ. They say that in the church 
of the future Jesus will not be the divine Son of 
God, but the ideal man, and that preparation for 
the life to come will consist simply in the cultiva- 
tion of the virtues illustrated by the life of Christ. 

I am sure that it will not be a difficult task to 
convince you that you have nothing to gain, and 
much to lose, by forsaking the old faith for the new. 

The Apostle John had been more than half a 
century in Christian life when he wrote, " This is 
the victory that overcometh the world, even our 
faith. " Faith in what ? What is the object upon 
which this conquering faith is centered ? Hear him 
again. " Who is he that overcometh the world but 
he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God." 



224 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 

John was warranted in making that declaration, 
not only by his own personal experience, but by his 
careful and diligent observation of the fruits of this 
faith in his fellow-Christians. The only men in all 
the range of his acquaintance who were conquerors 
of their own passions and of the world's temptations 
were the few who believed with all their hearts that 
the despised and crucified Jesus was the eternal Son 
of God. 

Many of the new religionists of our day do not 
deny that John was warranted in making this state- 
ment. They admit also that from his age down to 
the present time a sincere faith in the absolute di- 
vinity of the man Christ Jesus has purified the 
hearts and lives of thousands, and made them vic- 
torious in every conflict with the world's ungodli- 
ness. But while they make these admissions, they 
assert that a new era has dawned upon the world, 
and that new forces have come into the lives of men 
to take the place of the old faith. They tell us 
that we have outgrown the conditions which made 
the old faith a necessity. I am not more confident 
of my existence than I am that these would-be re- 
ligious reformers are " blind leaders of the blind/' 
and that the womb of hell contains nothing more 
false than the new creeds which they offer to men. 

In a few weeks we shall witness in this city a 
sort of ecclesiastical menagerie, called a " Congress 



THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 225 

of Liberal Religions/' that for variety of shapes and 
colors will exceed any similar combination upon 
which seekers of curiosity in our community have 
ever been permitted to gaze. The beasts, birds, and 
reptiles in Barnum's great traveling show were not 
more numerous or more dissimilar than the sects 
which are to constitute the great " Congress of 
Liberal Religions." It is hoped that their exhibi- 
tion will continue with us a little longer than the 
average menagerie is wont to do, for there will be 
things in it that will require a much more protracted 
observation than is generally bestowed upon the 
circus hippopotamus or unicorn. Among the ele- 
ments which will constitute this variegated combi- 
nation are Mormons, Spiritualists, Christian Scien- 
tists, Unitarians, Universalists, Theosophists, Deists, 
Atheists, Buddhists, Free Thinkers, Free Lovers, 
and Agnostics. A love feast in such an assemblage 
of human beings is rendered possible by the fact 
that they are all hostile to the great primal doc- 
trines of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

I affirm, and can prove, that overcoming evil 
within ourselves, and successfully resisting it in the 
world without, is just as difficult now as it ever was, 
and that these results can be accomplished only 
through faith in Christ as the divine and eternal 
Son of God. 

What is it to overcome the world? It is to 

p 



226 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 

understand the moral laws of the universe and to 
so adjust ourselves to them that we may derive from 
them the blessedness which they were ordained to 
bestow. In adjusting himself to these laws, a man 
must first overcome himself, and this is his most 
difficult task. Man's appetites and lusts to-day are 
just what they have ever been. They are imperious 
and unreasoning. He is selfish, and intensely so. 
His selfishness manifests itself either in a denial of 
God, or in worshiping a god which is the mere 
creature of his corrupt imagination. 

In trying to become upright, his first problem 
is how to dethrone self. Those of you who have 
never tried to bring yourselves into subjection to 
law and conscience and God, and to gain the mastery 
of the evils which tempt the soul, have no just con- 
ception of the severity of the struggle. As the 
power of a great stream of water is revealed only 
when it is resisted, so the strength of our depraved 
passions and of the seducing influences of the world 
are discovered only in our attempts to subdue them. 

Some of you may imagine that it is an easy 
undertaking to uproot the habit of profanity. Try 
it the next time you get mad with your servant or 
your neighbor, and you will find that your little 
will is as weak as some frail reed when it is shaken 
by the wind. 

If it has long been your practice to conceal your 



THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 227 

thoughts and purposes by deceptive words and 
actions, you will never know the hold which this 
unrighteous habit has upon you until you attempt 
to become perfectly honest and transparent in all 
your dealings with men. 

If the love of money is your master passion, you 
will never realize how complete and deplorable is 
your bondage until you attempt to disenthral your 
captive spirit. 

How to master these sordid elements of your 
nature, how to become monarch of your own un- 
godly thoughts and passions, and silence every voice 
of temptation that comes to you from a world at 
war with truth and virtue, is the great problem 
which confronts you. 

I find in other books than the Bible codes of 
morals which contain many things worthy of our 
observance. I find them in the writings of Plu- 
tarch. I find them in the meditations of Antoninus. 
I find them in the works of Lamartine and Voltaire. 
I agree with these writers in the main as to what I 
am and what I ought to be. The difference between 
us is, that they believe that by taking these univer- 
sally accepted rules of conduct as my guide, I can, by 
a process of self-culture, become morally pure and 
good, while I believe that I can accomplish this end 
only by the intervention of a divine Person, who 
empowers men to become pure and upright. 



228 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 

Believing on Jesus Christ as the Son of God, I 
look up to him in prayer, and he communicates to 
me the grace which enables me to live in harmony 
with God's moral law. The hope of the new re- 
ligionist is based upon power inherent in himself, 
but mine is founded on the merciful help of a per- 
sonal God and Saviour. 

Man's conflicts with himself and the world, in the 
present age, are just as fierce and bitter as they have 
ever been. Science and art have made real contri- 
butions to our welfare. One has discovered, and 
the other has applied, many hitherto unknown 
means of advancing the world in goodness and hap- 
piness. But notwithstanding these things, human 
life is still an arduous and painful struggle. 

Men are everywhere exposed to mighty tempta- 
tions. Our sons go forth from the parental roof to 
face a thousand foes to their virtue and happiness. 
In the realm of business they encounter maxims 
that are false, and customs deceitful and dishonest. 
The impression is made upon them at the very be- 
ginning that uncompromising moral integrity is an 
ideal that can never be realized, and that business 
of every sort has been reduced to such a fine point 
of competition, that the men who succeed are com- 
pelled to be tricksters. 

They soon discover that money is king, and that 
in social life intellectual and moral culture weighs 



THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 229 

but little against stocks, bonds, and bank accounts. 
They find that the veriest moral leper can mount 
to the pinnacle of social distinction, if he has the 
money to support his pretensions. They find that 
in the sphere of politics but little consideration is 
given to the Ten Commandments and the Golden 
Rule. They find that in the race for political office 
and honor, men loyal to truth and conscience are 
easily defeated by sharpers and demagogues. 

In the realm of social pleasure they see allure- 
ments to vice on every hand. If they refuse to visit 
a beer-garden, where men and women gather under 
the inspiration of music to drench themselves with 
intoxicating beverages and to feast their eyes upon 
the vice-breeding movements of the immodest ballet 
dancer, if they decline to participate in a game of 
progressive euchre, or refuse to accept from the 
hand of beauty the cup that is beaded with death 
and damnation, they are tabooed as boobies or Puri- 
tans or cranks. 

If they walk the streets of our cities, they are 
never out of sight of the gilded bar-room, an institu- 
tion established and fortified by the suffrages of 
their own fathers and patronized by men who are 
called by "the grand old name of gentlemen." 

If they go into an art gallery, they find the most 
conspicuous places given to pictures which delight 
only the eye of sensuality. If they go into an opera, 



230 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 

or theatre, there are nine chances to one that they 
will see a performance Avhich has as its theme the 
love of lust, and whose chief attractions are its sug- 
gestions of uncleanness. 

Who will say that this is an overdrawn picture of 
the dangers which beset the young men of this gen- 
eration ? Who will venture to contradict me when 
I affirm that all the discoveries of modern science, 
all the appliances of modern art, all the blandish- 
ments of modern literature, and all the passion- 
breeding customs of modern fashionable society, 
have multiplied the perils which threaten the purity 
and honor of our sons and daughters ? 

The moral needs of mankind in this latter day 
are just as profound and urgent as they were in any 
former generation. Requisite provision for these 
needs can come from no mere human source. 

Comfort, luxury, social elegance, and refinement, 
cannot cleanse the human soul of its pollutions. 
Depravity is as rank in the palace as in the hovel. 
Hatreds and discords are as common in high life as 
in humble life. The strifes of science are sometimes 
as bitter as the brawls of the fish-market. The 
meannesses of the literary man are as common and 
despicable as those of the milk carrier or the street 
scavenger. 

Conscience is still an element and faculty of the 
human constitution. Science, education, and higher 



THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 231 

civilization have not destroyed it. Remorse is as 
common among men to-day as it was a thousand 
years ago. The enlightened and cultured feel the 
sting of it as keenly as the rude and unlettered. 

Human sorrow is just as prevalent and poignant 
now as it was in any previous age. Wherever we 
go, in our wanderings up and down the earth, we 
find hearts smitten with grief and bleeding with 
anguish. When I follow my child to the grave and 
hear the sad words, " Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, 
dust to dust," my distress is just as deep and lonely 
as it would be if I were as ignorant as the peasant 
and poor as the pauper. 

Death, in this age of science, luxury, and material 
splendor, is just as inevitable and unrelenting as it 
was in the earlier periods of the world's history. 
The learned are as reluctant to die as the ignorant. 
Death is as much the "king of terrors" to the mil- 
lionaire as it is to the penniless beggar. The greatest 
man among us, in the dying hour, will feel as pro- 
foundly as the humblest and obscurest his need of 
divine consolation and support. 

To eradicate the evil within us, to withstand the 
temptations without, to overcome sorrow, and meet 
death with a shout of triumph, what do we need ? 
A new religion? A modified Christianity? A 
Christianity without a divine Christ ? A religion 
which, when reduced to its final analysis, is nothing 



232 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 

but a system of self-culture? A religion which 
promises victory over the world by the develop- 
ment of personal energy and the growth of intelli- 
gence and wealth ? 

No. To renounce the old faith for such a system 
is to enter upon an experiment that will end in con- 
fusion, darkness, and despair. We must look for 
the " old paths " and walk therein. We must cling 
to the faith in which our Christian fathers lived and 
died. " Who is he that overcometh the world but 
he that believeth that Jesus Christ is the Son of 
God ? " You need more than personal intelligence 
and personal energy. You need divine help, the 
help of infinite love, mercy, and poiver. Not until 
your human weakness is joined to deific strength can 
you master the forces of evil in your own nature 
and put the world's temptations beneath your feet. 

We do not need a new religion, but a more faith- 
ful teaching and a more fearless application of the 
old religion. 

Moral law has no power over the conscience and 
life, except as we connect it with a divine and 
supreme Lawgiver. It is not the love of right 
that will make a man obedient to divine govern- 
ment, but his regard for that divine and infinitely 
righteous Personality who sits upon the central 
throne of the universe. The man without faith in 
a personal God and Saviour cannot be relied on in 



THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 233 

any contest between right and wrong, because he 
has no inherent love of right and is destitute of the 
inspiration of any great and unselfish motive. 

Jesus Christ is the rightful sovereign of the 
world. That is what the apostles taught and the 
martyrs preached. Get men to believe that, and 
they will be sober, chaste, and upright ; get them 
to believe that, and " holiness unto the Lord " will 
be written on everything in commerce, in science, 
in philosophy, in literature, in politics, and in 
domestic and individual life. 

We need more men in the living ministry who 
will not shirk the responsibility of declaring every- 
where that Christ, the universal Monarch, will up- 
hold the majesty of his government by visiting 
everlasting condemnation and wrath upon those 
who reject him and despise his authority. 

That is a feature of the old religion which the 
apostles of the " new theology " are attempting to 
modify and soften. They cannot get rid of the 
doctrine of future retribution, because it is not only 
written in the Bible, but stamped upon the human 
conscience. Men instinctively know that there are 
distinctions between right and wrong, and that God 
will maintain these distinctions by rewarding the 
right and punishing the wrong. They instinctively 
know that a future judgment is needed for the 
vindication of the pure and faithful, whose portion 



234 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 

in this world is poverty, persecution, and anguish, 
and for the condemnation of the wicked and vicious, 
whose lives are comparatively free from pain and 
sorrow. 

We need a Christian ministry that will zealously 
insist upon a rigid and faithful application of the 
precepts of the old religion to all the affairs of men. 
A wire-pulling and trick-inventing politician said, 
in a recent conversation : " I like my pastor better 
than any other minister in the city, because he 
preaches a gospel which never touches business or 
politics." Such a preacher is unworthy of his 
sacred livery, and should either repent of his 
cowardice or surrender his credentials and retire 
from the pulpit. 

What does the prophet mean by " the old paths " ? 
Evidently he means paths that have been opened 
and established by divine wisdom and authority. 
We instinctively feel and believe that there is some- 
thing accessible to man that is infallible. We 
realize profoundly the necessity for an infallible 
standard of truth, wisdom, justice, love, and right- 
eousness. What is that infallible standard ? It is 
not human philosophy ; it is not human tradition ; 
it is not any human priesthood ; it is not even the 
church of the living God. What is it ? I believe, 
and I trust that you believe, that the only infalli- 
bility to be found in this lower world is in these 



THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 235 

sacred Scriptures, which contain the thought and 
will of God, communicated to us by men who spoke 
and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. 

I accept this divine book, and I trust that you 
accept it, as the only infallible standard of religious 
faith and practice. If you charge me with heresy, 
I simply demand that you test my belief and prac- 
tice by the teachings of this book. If you charge 
the denomination to which I belong with heresy, I 
only ask that you subject its faith to the same 
divine test. 

Hitherto, in every quarter of the globe, the slo- 
gan of the Baptists has been, " The Bible, and the 
Bible only, our rule of faith and practice." With 
that motto inscribed upon our banner, we have 
conquered in a thousand bitter conflicts with priest- 
craft and traditionalism. 

In this latter day men have risen up among us 
who would lead us away from " the old paths " by 
an amendment to the old standard of Baptist ortho- 
doxy and by the invention of a new test of Baptist 
fellowship. Certain books purporting to be Baptist 
history have been written, and self-constituted 
heresy hunters tell us that unless we accept the 
statements of these historians as true, we are here- 
tics and are unworthy of Baptist fellowship. 

To this new test I will never submit. My faith 
is anchored on no human history or tradition. I 



236 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 

am planted not upon what Donatists, Novatians, 
Albigenses, Waldenses, Petrobrusians, or Anabap- 
tists believed and practised in the remote past, but 
only upon what Jesus Christ and his inspired 
apostles taught. To depart from God's word to 
follow any human authority, history, or tradition is 
to enter a path that will lead to hopeless confusion 
and disaster. 

Whether the Anabaptists in England under the 
pressure of a terrible persecution did for a century 
or more abandon immersion and practise sprinkling 
and pouring for baptism is a question which does 
not affect in the remotest degree the faith and prac- 
tice of the Baptists of the nineteenth century. If 
believers' immersion is wrong, it is not wrong be- 
cause the Anabaptists of England renounced it for 
a period ; and if it is right, it is right independently 
of the belief and practice of any Christian sect. It 
is right because our divine Exemplar submitted to 
it and required his disciples everywhere and in 
every age to do the same. 

I am constrained to believe that the present de- 
fection upon this question is but local and ephem- 
eral, that it will pass away under the influence of a 
clearer statement and understanding of the founda- 
tion principles of our denomination, and that when 
the present controversy is ended the great Baptist 
army will be seen marching in the same old path, 



THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 237 

and exalting, above all other wisdom and authority, 
the book whose every line is full of light and whose 
every page is stamped with the " eternal heraldry 
and signature of God Almighty." 



XVII 
CHRIST'S ACCOMPLISHED WORK 



" It is finished. ' ' John 19 : 30. 

This was next to the last utterance that Jesus 
made on the cross. In the Greek it is only one 
word. On the lips of the dying Christ that was the 
most pregnant word that ever fell on human ears. 
It was an epitome of divine revelation. It expresses 
the substance of God's great scheme of recovering 
mercy. It is the rock on which every rational hope 
of heaven is built. 

Some are weak enough to imagine that Jesus 
meant simply to inform his friends that he had 
reached the point of insensibility to pain ; but to us 
who look at this dying exclamation in the light of 
all that he had previously said concerning his death, 
it is apparent that he meant infinitely more than 
this. To us it is clear that in crying aloud, " It is 
finished/' he signified that the work which he came 
into the world to do was accomplished, and that all 
the sufferings incident to that work had ceased. 

His emotion at that moment was akin to that 

238 



Christ's accomplished work 239 

which the philosopher feels, when after years of in- 
tense struggle with a great problem he reaches the 
solution, and exclaims, "I have it ! I have it! And 
a sweet relief comes to my aching brain." It was a 
shout like that which goes up from a faithful crew, 
when, after battling all night with a storm that has 
raged like the fury of fiends, they reach the harbor, 
see the dawn gilding the eastern sky, furl the tem- 
pest-torn sails, cast anchor in peaceful waters and 
in sight of a shore where loved ones are waiting and 
watching for their return. 

I hope, this morning, not only to interest you, 
but to quicken your spiritual life and promote your 
spiritual joy, in speaking both of the work and 
sufferings of our divine Redeemer that were com- 
pleted on the cross. 

1. Let us consider first the work. When Jesus 
was only twelve years old he was conscious that his 
life was destined to be an exceptional one. He 
felt that some great work was committed to him. 
Inspired by this conviction, he said to his parents, 
" Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's 
business?" 

If there is a boy among your children who is 
chosen of God to be a leader of men, and to accom- 
plish a great mission in commerce, or science, or 
literature, or art, or statecraft, or religion, he will 
give indications of it at a very early age. He real- 



240 Christ's accomplished work 

izes that he was born for something great, and that 
feeling makes him more thoughtful and serious than 
his brothers and sisters. At school he is a marked 
boy. His teachers see that he is taking life more 
seriously than any of his classmates. He is more 
to himself and more thoughtful about the future 
than his associates of the same age. 

Jesus was such a boy. He felt that his Father 
in heaven had chosen and anointed him for some 
great mission to men. What that mission was, and 
how it should be accomplished, he but dimly com- 
prehended in the days of his childhood. It grew 
upon him as he grew in years and strength. Every 
hour of communion with God and of meditation 
upon the Hebrew prophecies rendered his concep- 
tions of it more distinct. 

He saw around him a world lying in wickedness. 
He saw that men everywhere were violators of di- 
vine law, and that having transgressed that law they 
were condemned and under sentence of death. 

The world needed a divine Redeemer. Such a 
deliverer was promised in the sacred Scriptures. 
As Jesus read the prophecies concerning the Mes- 
siah, and studied the types and ceremonies which 
prefigured his work, the conviction grew upon him 
that he himself was the being who was destined to 
fulfill all the law and the prophets. He realized 
more and more that he was " the seed of the woman " 



Christ's accomplished work 241 

that should bruise the serpent's head ; that he was 
the one typified by the brazen serpent which was 
lifted above the camp of the dying Israelites ; that 
he was the one concerning whom Isaiah wrote, " He 
is despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows, 
and acquainted with grief. . . Surely he hath borne 
our griefs, and carried our sorrows : yet we did es- 
teem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was 
bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of our 
peace was upon him ; and with his stripes we are 
healed." 

When Jesus said upon the cross, " It is finished," 
he meant that he was God's Messiah, and that by 
his life, sufferings, and death, he had fulfilled all the 
Messianic types and prophecies of the Old Testa- 
ment. 

From the beginning of his public life he was 
thoroughly dominated by the thought and convic- 
tion that a great task was upon him. His purpose 
to perform that task possessed him completely. He 
gave to it all the resources of his body, mind, and 
spirit. On one occasion when the disciples offered 
him food, he turned them away, saying, "I have 
meat to eat that ye know not of. . . My meat is to 
do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his 
work." As he drew near to the completion of that 
work, he exclaimed, " I have a baptism to be bap- 

Q 



242 Christ's accomplished work 

tized with ; and how am I straitened till it be ac- 
complished ! " 

He had a work to do, and it was something 
greater than any other human being had ever at- 
tempted. Men consecrate themselves to science 
and bless the world by multiplying its discoveries. 
Some devote themselves to the liberation of their 
country from the galling yoke of despotism. Others 
wear themselves out in grappling with great ques- 
tions of philosophy. Some enrich the world with 
imperishable contributions of sculpture, or painting, 
or music. Others imperil their lives in opening up 
unexplored continents, and die with their faces to 
the task. But no one ever undertook a task worthy 
to be compared to that which engaged the mind and 
heart of Jesus, the task of saving a lost world. 

The consciousness that his was a work for God 
was the chief source of our Lord's inspiration. " I 
must work the works of him that sent me." "The 
Father hath not left me alone ; for I do always those 
things which please him.'' 

At the close of his ministry he looked up into the 
face of his Heavenly Father and said : " I have 
glorified thee on the earth ; I have finished the work 
which thou gavest me to do." 

The highest and holiest feeling that can inspire 
human activity is a desire to please God and glorify 
his name. As this feeling was supreme in the heart 



Christ's accomplished work 243 

of Christ, we know that we are lifted into fellowship 
with him when we are conscious that our regnant 
purpose is to advance the triumphs of God's truth 
and righteousness in the world. The highest arch- 
angel in heaven is not more thoroughly in sympathy 
with Jesus Christ than the man on earth whose 
ruling desire is to please God. 

The satisfaction which we experience in finishing 
a great task is generally in proportion to the diffi- 
culties we have encountered and mastered in the 
performance of it. 

When Christopher Columbus, after a long and 
perilous voyage, saw at last the sunlight on the 
peaks of the New World and realized that his life- 
work was about accomplished, the memory of all 
the difficulties he had met in securing pecuniary aid 
for his undertaking, and of all the dangers he had 
faced in battling with storms and contending with a 
mutinous crew, made success a thousand-fold sweeter 
than it would have been if the enterprise had been 
free from struggle, peril, and suffering. 

What must have been the joy of the heroic and 
patient men who followed George Washington 
through all the scenes and suffering of a seven 
years' war, when they received the announcement 
that Great Britain had acknowledged the independ- 
ence of the American colonies, that their patriotic 
task was finished, that the long and bitter struggle 



244 Christ's accomplished work 

was over, and that they were free to return to their 
homes and enjoy all the rich fruits of the victory 
they had won ? 

There are some men-destroying and God-defying 
institutions in this country which I have been fight- 
ing for more than thirty years with almost the en- 
ergy of desperation. If my heavenly Master spares 
me to see them die I shall have a feeling akin to 
that which old Simeon had when he said, " Lord, 
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for 
mine eyes have seen thy salvation." 

I sometimes try to imagine what would be the joy 
of that old temperance hero, Neal Dow, if he could 
live to see the downfall of every bar-room and dis- 
tillery on American soil. I think he would want to 
get hold of the tongue of another "liberty bell" and 
ring out to the world tidings as glorious as the 
message which went forth from Independence Hall 
in 1776. I have tried to imagine what my own 
feeling would be if I should wake up some morn- 
ing and hear that the accursed liquor traffic had 
perished from our soil. It would be a rapture 
which the highest of the angelic throng could afford 
to covet. 

These, my friends, are but feeble suggestions of 
what Christ saw and felt when from the cross he 
exclaimed, " It is finished ! " We are wont to 
dwell upon the agony of our dear Lord as he hung 



Christ's accomplished work 245 

upon the tree ; it must beget in us a sweet relief to 
believe that he had there also an experience of joy, 
a joy equal even to that which he felt when he 
ascended from Olivet and the everlasting gates were 
opened to receive him. What other emotion could 
have filled him in that moment when he said, " It 
is finished " ? 

These words were spoken to two worlds, heaven 
and earth. To God and the angels they meant that 
the mission on which he had left the celestial world 
was accomplished. He had revealed God to man. 
He had brought to light every attribute of the in- 
visible Jehovah. He had declared his righteous 
displeasure against sin. He had revealed God's 
fatherly pity and mercy for the sinner. He had 
laid himself as a victim upon the altar of divine 
justice, and thereby magnified the law and made it 
honorable. He had planted a kingdom in the 
hearts of men that could not be overthrown, and 
that was destined to revolutionize and bring into 
subjection to God's will every other kingdom. In 
all this he had glorified his Father on the earth. 

Finished ! To men this meant that he had 
bridged the chasm which was made when sin 
entered the world and heaven and earth went 
asunder. By bearing their sins in his own body on 
the tree he had paid their indebtedness to divine 
justice, and not only saved them from the wrath to 



246 Christ's accomplished work 

come, but provided a righteousness by which all 
who believe on him are justified and made meet for 
the kingdom of heaven. 

In announcing the consummation of this sublime 
work there must have been in the heart of Christ a 
satisfaction infinitely deeper and stronger than any 
joy which earthly victor ever felt in being crowned 
and sceptered amid the resounding acclamations of 
an admiring and grateful nation. 

When his quivering lips exclaimed, "It is fin- 
ished ! " this poor blind world did not know what 
he meant. Heaven understood him, and up there 
in the realm of glorified beings there was such a 
demonstration as had never been witnessed before. 
Every banner was lifted higher ; every face kindled 
with the brightness of a deeper joy ; every crown 
glittered with a more resplendent beauty ; and there 
was such a chorus of hallelujahs as had never rent 
the air and shaken the vault of heaven. 

2. Having spoken of his work, let us consider 
also his sufferings, for he meant that they too were 
finished. The life of Jesus was one of unprece- 
dented struggle and anguish. No other being had 
ever accomplished his life-work under conditions so 
unfriendly. The people whom he came to seek and 
save had the grossest misconceptions of his character 
and mission. One of the most pathetic statements 
to be found in the Gospels is, "He was in the 



Christ's accomplished work 247 

world, and the world was made by him, and the 
world knew him not." 

Inconceivably distressful must have been his 
sense of isolation. He needed human sympathy, 
and he longed for it, but, " He came unto his own, 
and his own received him not." His purpose was 
so beneficent, and his desire to do good to men so 
obvious, it seems utterly inscrutable that he should 
have met with anything but encouragement and 
furtherance in his mission. 

But the more his great heart opened to the world 
the more the world shut its hard heart against him. 
In planting the standard of the purest and most 
helpful religion that was ever offered to men, it 
seems that sincere religious teachers would have 
hailed his coming and rallied to his support. But 
priests, elders, and doctors of the law, not only stood 
aloof from him and despised him, but confederated 
with every evil element to destroy him. As he 
breathed the spirit of the truest and loftiest patriot- 
ism, it does seem that his fellow-countrymen would 
have greeted him everywhere with tokens of sym- 
pathy and appreciation ; but they treated him as a 
conspirator and traitor. 

He was so philanthropic, so devoted to the work 
of relieving human want and suffering, we cannot 
understand the opposition of the people. He healed 
their sick, cleansed their lepers, made their lame 



248 Christ's accomplished work 

walk and leap with joy, opened the eyes of their 
blind, and unstopped the ears of their deaf; but 
when they might perhaps have saved his life, they 
cried out : " Away with him ! Crucify him ! " 

Everything that was influential in his age and 
country was against him. Civil government, ecclesi- 
astical rulers, and the people, combined to thwart 
and crush him. 

Who can tell what his sensitive spirit suffered in 
contending with all this opposition to his peaceful 
and merciful mission? Who can tell what he 
suffered when Judas betrayed him and Peter denied 
him? Who can fathom his sense of humiliation 
when the mob came upon him and he received that 
staggering blow from the servant of the high priest ? 
How his heart must have bled when they clothed 
him with mock royalty and spit in his face ! Think 
of the torture he endured when they scourged him 
with loaded thongs until he was too weak to carry 
his cross to the place of execution. 

Think of all the physical agonies that he experi- 
enced in having the rugged iron spikes driven 
through his hands and feet. Think of the terrible 
pangs that shot through his frame when they lifted 
the cross, to which they had nailed him, and jerked 
it into the mortised rock. Think of the loss of blood 
and the consequent dizziness and fainting, and the 
burning, maddening thirst. 



Christ's accomplished work: 249 

But what he suffered up to that point was almost 
insignificant in comparison with what he endured in 
that hour of utter darkness, when he cried, " My 
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? M For- 
saken of God ! That men should forsake him was 
not so strange. Must he endure not only the malice 
of mobs, the denial of friends, the fury of fiends, 
the desertion of earth about him, and the murmur- 
ing heavens above, but have mingled with the un- 
utterable cup the hidings even of his Father's face ? 

Why did God forsake him? That is a matter 
which it behooves us to look into. Why did God 
the Father desert his Son in that hour of his greatest 
trial ? I am absolutely sure that I do not mislead 
you when I say that it was because sin rested upon 
him. It was not his own sin, but the sin of the 
guilty and ruined race which he came to seek and 
to save. " He hath made him to be sin for us who 
knew no sin." All human guilt was laid upon him, 
and that made an object so revolting that God would 
neither look upon it nor allow his sun to shine upon 
it. Think, if you can, of what would be a just 
punishment for a single transgression of the infi- 
nitely holy law of the infinitely holy God and then 
multiply it by the whole sum of human transgres- 
sions. If you could do this, you might have some- 
thing like a true conception of what Jesus suffered 
when he " tasted death for every man." 



250 Christ's accomplished work 

Take the agony which David felt when he 
thought of his double crime of adultery and mur- 
der, and exclaimed, " Against thee, thee only, have 
I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight ! " or take 
the maddening woe of Judas, when he threw down 
the price of his infamy in the temple and went out 
into the night and put an end to his life, and multi- 
ply it by the drops of water in the ocean or the 
atoms of matter in the universe. If it were pos- 
sible for you to do this, you might approach some- 
thing like a just conception of the " horror of great 
darkness " that came upon the soul of Jesus when 
he cried, " My God, my God, why hast thou for- 
saken me ? " 

What speech, human or superhuman, could ex- 
press the blessedness of the relief which he experi- 
enced when he exclaimed, " It is finished ! " When 
he said that the anguish was over, the burden had 
dropped, the cloud and darkness had passed, legions 
of ministering angels were about him, God's smiling 
face was before him, and the whole universe re- 
sounded with " Gloria in Excelsis." As a reward 
for this finished work and suffering, God has exalted 
him and given him a name that is above every 
name, a name to which every knee shall bow and 
every tongue confess, in the heavens above and the 
earth beneath. 

In beholding the inauguration of a great civil 



Christ's accomplished wokk 251 

ruler, in witnessing the bonfires, illuminations, and 
processions, and in listening to the blasts of brazen 
trumpets, the thunder of cannon, and the deafening 
acclamations, which gave expression to the admira- 
tion, joy, and fealty of the people, I tried to transfer 
my thoughts to that infinitely grander scene where 
a redeemed world and a rejoicing universe of sinless 
and exalted beings shall gather to pay tribute to 
Jesus Christ. There not only every kindred and 
every tribe on this planet, but all angels and arch- 
angels, cherubim and seraphim, thrones, dominions, 
principalities, and powers, will join the everlasting 
song and crown him Lord of all. 

Brethren, is there not unspeakable inspiration 
and joy in the thought that we, who now patiently 
labor and suffer with Christ, and whose unfaltering 
purpose is to be faithful unto death and finish the 
work committed to our hands, shall be with him, 
and share the rapture and glory of his coronation ? 
No prophet has foreseen, no artist has painted, and 
no poet has sung of a destiny more exalted and 
blissful than that which awaits us in that life be- 
yond, unmeasured by the flight of years. If pres- 
ent dreams and visions of it are so sweet, who can 
express the rapture of our souls when we come to 
the realization of this long-cherished hope, when 
mortality is swallowed up of life, and we see not as 
now, " through a glass darkly/' but face to face. 



252 Christ's accomplished woek 

There is but one word in our language that expresses 
the felicity of the state to which we are tending. 
That word is satisfied. " I shall be satisfied when 
I awake with thy likeness." " Ne plus ultra" 
Beyond and above that human aspiration cannot go. 



XVIII 
INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 



" Meddle not with them that are given to change.* ' 
Prov. 24 : 21. 

These inspired words of caution commend them- 
selves to our judgment and common sense. Both 
reason and experience teach us that it is unwise and 
unsafe to involve ourselves financially, politically, 
socially, or otherwise, with men who are unstable 
and capricious. It is unsafe to make them leaders 
or counselors or confederates in any cause. 

The man who is anchored to nothing, and is adrift 
in the wide world of human thought and activity, 
having no settled purposes or convictions, not know- 
ing one day what he will do or what he will be the 
next, is not the man to be our adviser or guide in 
any sphere. The unstable man is sure to fail in 
everything that he undertakes. He begins many 
things but completes nothing. He staggers under 
the weight of high conceptions and big schemes 
which never materialize. He is a crusader to-day 
for a cause which he will renounce to-morrow. He 

253 



254 INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 

follows nothing to a successful issue. He carries no 
banner to complete and final victory. 

Only a few days ago I was asked to express an 
opinion as to the qualifications of a certain well- 
known man for the management of a newly organ- 
ized religious movement. My reply was : 

" The only thing which disqualifies him for the 
position is his instability of purpose. He speaks 
well, he writes well, his ambition is vaulting, his 
enthusiasm intense, and his energy uncommon ; but, 
in a public career of thirty years, every enterprise 
committed to his care has perished because he 
would not hold to it long enough to make it suc- 
cessful." 

I imagine that it was just such a character that 
Solomon had before his mind's eye when he wrote 
the words of the text : " Meddle not with them that 
are given to change." 

Look anywhere and you will see illustrations of 
our subject. 

1. Instability of character is seen in the restless 
and roving disposition of men who go from country 
to country. I do not deny that circumstances arise 
which justify men in removing from one locality to 
another, and in transferring their allegiance from one 
nation to another. 

The Pilgrim Fathers, who came hither and built 
their homes in a wilderness infested with savages 



INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 255 

and wild beasts, were not unstable men. It was 
their steadfast devotion to a great principle that 
brought them here. They came to preserve their 
birthright. They came to establish a community 
and to found a nation in which they could be free to 
worship God in their own way. This magnificent 
fabric of free government stands to-day an eloquent 
and enduring witness to their wisdom, their energy, 
and their unflagging devotion to a sacred cause. 

The thousands who have come to these shores 
because they found it impossible in their own native 
lands to provide for themselves and their families, 
have simply obeyed a virtuous, instinct implanted in 
their breasts by their benignant Creator. I have 
nothing to say against the multitudes of young men 
who, with manly and patriotic motives, have left 
the habitations of their fathers in these older States 
of our republic, and have gone West to the very 
borders of civilization. 

The unstable man is he who changes without an 
adequate reason, roves just because he loves to rove, 
and is never satisfied with any country, because he 
imagines that somewhere under the sun there is a 
better one. 

I will say to the present generation of young men 
in the South, that no spot on this globe offers a bet- 
ter opening to-day for the successful prosecution of 
almost any legitimate business than the territory 



256 INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 

which lies within the precincts of these Southern 
States. The man who cannot succeed in such a 
country is incapable of success anywhere. The 
young man who gives up a moderately good busi- 
ness situation in Alabama to seek his fortune in 
the far-off gold fields of Alaska, makes a mistake 
from which he will never recover. If he should live 
to return, he will never forgive himself for believ- 
ing the seductive stories of the sharpers and knaves 
who took advantage of his ignorance and credulity. 

2. Instability of character is illustrated by men 
who shift from one occupation to another and who 
stick to no trade or profession long enough to suc- 
ceed at it. 

If a man has entered a vocation for which he has 
no natural aptitude, and has gone far enough to be 
thoroughly convinced of his inability to succeed, it 
is not only wisdom, but duty to forsake it for some 
other employment. 

If a man has tried farming for ten years and 
made nothing, he owes it to himself, his family, and 
the cause of agriculture to quit the business. There 
are many lawyers who might change their occupa- 
tion without any serious detriment to the cause of 
justice and humanity. There are physicians who 
might abandon their profession without incurring 
any suspicion of cruelty to their patients. There 
are musicians, some vocal and some instrumental, 



INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 257 

who could withdraw their talents from public view 
without impoverishing the profession, or afflicting 
the communities to which they have devoted their 
services. There are statesmen out of a job who 
might continue in a state of involuntary retirement 
without inflicting any serious injury upon the coun- 
try. 

As a rule men do not change from one occupation 
to another on account of their inability to succeed, 
but from a love of novelty, from a desire to vary 
their experiences and activities. The same routine 
of employment, from year to year, becomes monot- 
onous, and they crave the excitement incident to new 
endeavor in a new field. I once read of a Western 
man, who having tried farming, teaching, literature, 
dentistry, medicine, law, politics, and preaching, 
closed his inglorious career as a peripatetic peddler 
of cheap tombstones. 

Paul says, "Let every man abide in the same 
calling w r herein he was called." He declares it to 
be your moral and religious duty to hold on to your 
vocation, if it be one to which you are adapted by 
natural endowment. By your patient and untiring 
pursuit of any honest and honorable business and 
by your continued success in it, you not only enrich 
yourself and help your fellow-men, but please and 
glorify God. 

I have heard a man give as his excuse for 



258 INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 

changing his business that it was surrounded by too 
many temptations to wrong-doing. We can readily 
conceive of cases in which this would be a valid 
and sufficient reason for a change of occupation. 
If I were in the service of a merchant or manu- 
facturer who required me to go into bar-rooms and 
gambling houses to solicit custom, I would give 
up my situation without a moment's hesitation. I 
would go in rags, live in a log hut, sleep on a 
pallet of straw, and suffer the pangs of cold and 
hunger, rather than defile and debase my manhood 
with any such ignominious work. 

But if you keep out of business until you can find 
employment free from temptation you will be an 
idler for the rest of your life. You may change 
from place to place, but until you get beyond the 
stars, you will not be out of gunshot of the devil. 
Evil spirits surround men in every situation and 
condition. The poor man is sorely beset w T ith temp- 
tations incident to hardships, and the rich are en- 
compassed by a thousand influences unfriendly to 
virtue. He who toils with his hands feels the 
pressure of temptation, but he who toils with his 
brain feels it more. 

I do not doubt that virtuous living is easier in 
some pursuits than in others. It seems to be com- 
monly conceded that politicians, newspaper men, 
tax collectors, plumbers, and undertakers, are more 



INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 259 

susceptible to Satanic suggestion than the generality 
of mankind. No vocation is free from malign in- 
fluences. Whether our work be secular or sacred, 
in the counting-room or the prayer meeting, on the 
rostrum or in the pulpit, the devil is there with 
his old bribe : " All these things will I give thee, 
if thou wilt fall down and worship me." 

3. Instability of character is seen in the frequency 
with which some church-members change from one 
post of religious service to another. A man who 
has successfully occupied a certain position in his 
church sees a higher place and, without considering 
the question of fitness for it, is impatient and un- 
happy until he is put into it. 

I do not doubt that in some instances men who 
make such changes act wisely. If a Christian 
worker has outgrown his place and is manifestly 
qualified for a higher and broader one, it is his 
privilege and duty to change. The church will not 
be slow in recognizing his growth and his fitness for 
a larger work, and will advance him as rapidly as 
he ought to go. It is better to do a little thing 
perfectly than a great thing imperfectly. It is bet- 
ter to be a success as a bootblack than a failure as 
a painter. It is more honorable to be a skillful 
cobbler than a briefless lawyer. An intelligent and 
active church-member who holds no office is regal 
in comparison with an ignorant and inefficient dea- 



260 INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 

con. If there is one thing the world needs less 
than another it is the preacher who cannot preach. 
A pastorless church is a sad spectacle, hut a preacher 
without a pulpit because no church is poor enough 
to need him, is an object which calls for still deeper 
commiseration. 

My brother, be not impatient to change your 
sphere of Christian activity. Restrain your aspira- 
tions for a higher place in the synagogue. Curb 
your craving for the uppermost seat at the feast, 
lest you get into a place for which you are un- 
fitted and from which the Lord and your brethren 
would have you step down. 

4. The most mischievous and deplorable exhibi- 
tions of instability are seen in the frequent radical 
changes which some men make in their religious 
beliefs. During my brief residence here, I have 
been amazed at the number of men in this city who 
have drifted from solid Christian orthodoxy either 
to unmitigated agnosticism or to practical atheism. 
If there were anything worse than agnosticism and 
atheism they would go to that. 

When men cease to believe in an almighty and 
eternal Father, who lives and reigns everywhere in 
the boundless universe, and who governs all things 
in wisdom, righteousness, and love, there will come 
a wail of never-dying sorrow from every nation, 
kindred, tongue, and tribe, a cry that will declare 



INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 261 

human existence to be a burden and a wrong, for 
which the only relief is a sleep which knows no 
waking. 

That men who have ever known the blessedness 
of trusting the Lord Jesus Christ, that men who 
have heard his gracious voice speaking peace to 
their secret souls, should turn away from him to the 
empty cisterns of human philosophy is to me the 
most perplexing of all problems. "Lord, to whom 
shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." 
Where shall we find another refuge from sin, and 
guilt, and aching care ? We are like Noah's dove 
that went out from the ark, and found nowhere, 
amid all the waste of waters, a resting-place for its 
feet. Where in all the world, or in all the limitless 
universe, can we find rest for our souls away from 
the cross of Christ? 

I have had rationalistic moods, I have gone forth 
for a season to explore new fields and to find some 
new food for my craving spirit, but from every such 
excursion I have returned with a sad heart ; and to 
get back the old peace and joy for which I longed, 
I have had to sing the old song over and over 
again : 

Nothing in my hands I bring, 
Simply to thy cross I cling ; 
Naked, come to thee for dress, 
Helpless, look to thee for grace. 



262 INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 

Stability of character is something whose worth 
we cannot measure. It is Godlikeness. As man 
develops morally and spiritually he rises toward 
equality with God. One of the most beautiful and 
adorable attributes of the Deity is his immutability. 
He is "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." 
What he loved and what he hated when the morn- 
ing stars sang together and the sons of God shouted 
for joy over the birth of a new world he loves and 
hates at this moment. Sin is as black and repulsive 
to his eye now as it was when he drove Adam from 
paradise or when he hurled Satan from the battle- 
ments of heaven. 

If we are conscious that we are becoming more 
and more fixed and immutable in our hatred and 
intolerance of all uncleanness and unrighteousness, 
we may know that we are rising toward equality 
with God. 

Diogenes, the philosopher, lived a life of great 
simplicity and self-denial. When he reached his 
eighty-fifth year his friends said : " Now, Diogenes, 
take your ease, dismiss care and labor, and live after 
the manner of the Epicureans." The old philoso- 
pher's reply was : " One so near the goal as I can- 
not afford to falter in the way of virtue." 

A few months ago my heart was deeply wounded 
by some unknown enemy, who caused to be pub- 
lished in more than a hundred newspapers the 



INSTABILITY OF CHARACTEK 263 

statement that I had forsaken the pulpit for the 
lecture platform. It was extremely harrowing to 
my soul to know that any man in this broad land 
could believe me capable of such unfaithfulness to 
the Lord who bought me with his precious blood 
and put me into the work of the Christian ministry. 
Thanks be to God, I am too near the shining goal 
to think of faltering now. With my eyes lifted to 
the pearly gates of the eternal city, where I shall 
soon sit, robed, crowned, and sceptered at the right 
hand of Majesty, and join with the millions of the 
redeemed in an eternal anthem of victory, no temp- 
tation to forsake the w r ork of Christ could move me. 

Paul said that f( neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, 
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
other creature," could separate him from Christ. 
In these eloquent words he simply expressed his 
unconquerable determination to persevere unto the 
end. He did persevere ; he was faithful unto 
death, and when the end came he exclaimed : " I 
am now ready to be offered, and the time of my 
departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight ; 
I have finished my course ; I have kept the faith ; 
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown." 

Brethren, let us covet and seek a stability of 
Christian purpose that neither the wrath of men nor 
the fury of fiends can shake. 



264 INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 

In the latter half of the third century, Arcadius 
suffered martyrdom rather than worship the gods of 
pagan Rome. The order of the magistrate was 
that he should be slowly dismembered. His fingers 
were first taken off, joint by joint ; then his toes ; 
then his hands at the wrist ; then his feet at the 
ankles. When this had been done, he looked up to 
heaven and said : " O God, keep me faithful to the 
end." The executioners then cut out his tongue. 
They threw him upon his back and amputated his 
legs at the knees and his arms at the elbows. He 
expired in a pool of blood, steadfast to the last. 

My brother, can you look upon such an exhibi- 
tion of fealty as that and not blush for your own 
cowardice in turning aside from the path of Christian 
rectitude and duty to escape the jeers and ridicule of 
a giddy and godless throng ? 

We have come to a time when the church of God 
must have more stability in the character of her 
members or else retire from many of her battle- 
fields. She needs more men who are rooted and 
grounded in the truth, men whose faith is eternally 
anchored, men whose courage will abide the pres- 
ence of any opposition or any danger, men who will 
wear the colors of their divine Captain in the face 
of any foe, men who will stand and suffer all that 
infidel malignity and Satanic enmity can lay upon 
them, men who at any moment would part with 



INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 265 

property, liberty, and life itself, rather than prove 
false to any principle of the gospel of Christ. 

I thank God that we have in our churches a few 
men and women of this type. They are the salt of 
the earth and the light of the world. It is their 
hold on the eternal verities of God's word that ren- 
ders possible the final overthrow of all unrighteous- 
ness and unbelief, and the conversion of the whole 
world to the faith of the gospel. It will be in an- 
swer to their prayers and to reward their fidelity 
that the Lord God will, by and by, open the gates 
of the morning and fill the whole earth with the 
light and beauty of his truth arid grace. 






XIX 

THE TWO MARYS AT THE 
SEPULCHRE 



"And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, 
sitting over against the sepulchre. " Matt. 27 : 61. 

Neither in the New Testament nor in the 
writings of the apostolic Fathers is there the faintest 
trace of the celebration of Easter as a Christian 
festival. The sanctity of special times and places 
was an idea absolutely alien to the early Christian 
mind. Easter observance is purely of human origin. 
To that class of Christians who accept the sacred 
Scriptures as the highest authority and the only rule 
of religious faith and practice, every Lord's Day is 
Easter. Every Sabbath's sun reminds them of the 
adorable being who on that day rose in triumph 
from the grave. The celebration of the resurrec- 
tion of Christ is a service appropriate to any Sun- 
day in the year. Every Lord's Day, by songs 
and prayers and sermons and floral offerings, we 
should commemorate Christ's victory over the grave. 
Every administration of the ordinance of baptism is 

266 



THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 267 

a commemoration of that glorious event. Just as 
the observance of the Lord's Supper commemorates 
his death on the cross, so does a burial with Christ 
in baptism remind us that after his crucifixion he 
was buried and rose again. 

Joseph and his companions had rolled the great 
stone to the door of the sepulchre and retired in 
sorrow to their homes ; the mob that surrounded 
the cross had dispersed ; the disciples had gone 
every one to his own house ; and around the tomb 
in which the body of Jesus was laid there was 
silence, broken only by the sighs and sobs of two 
women who lingered there to indulge their grief. 
"And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other 
Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre." 

" The other Mary" was the mother of James and 
Judas — not Iscariot — and Joseph. Two of her sons 
had been appointed to the apostleship. It is not 
strange that the mother of such children loved 
Christ, and that one whom he had so highly honored 
was among the last to leave his grave. 

Her companion was Mary Magdalene. I will 
venture to express the opinion that great injustice 
has been done to the memory of this noble woman. 
All through this country and Europe there are 
asylums for fallen women which, by bearing the 
name of Magdalene, convey to the world the im- 
pression that she was a converted harlot. There is 



268 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 

not a word in the New Testament that supports any 
such conception of her character. She was at one 
time possessed of seven devils, but that does not 
indicate that she was an outcast, because even inno- 
cent little children were subject to demoniacal pos- 
session. Whether she had been a great sinner or 
not, we know that she had been a great suiferer. 
Both in mind and body she endured agonies akin to 
the tortures of the damned. 

Have you ever seen an incarcerated madman 
fighting with phantoms, grappling with all manner 
of imaginary horrors, shrieking with pain, and cry- 
ing for help? A hundred- fold worse than that was 
the condition of Mary Magdalene when she was 
crazed, maddened, and tortured by infernal spirits. 
Could anything be more natural than her gratitude 
and her lingering at the tomb of the benevolent 
being who had delivered her from Satanic bondage ? 

Approaching night compelled these women to 
leave the sepulchre. They went home to prepare 
for the anointing of the sacred body. They had no 
thought of embalming it, because that was a service 
which belonged exclusively to men. It was their 
purpose simply to anoint the face and hands and 
feet with fragrant oil. That was a beautiful sug- 
gestion of love. We are moved by a kindred im- 
pulse when we plant flowers and evergreens on the 
graves of our precious dead. 



THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 269 

They prepared for the anointing on Friday night. 
The next day was the Jewish Sabbath. The sacred 
historian says, they " rested the sabbath day accord- 
ing to the commandment/' What an exhibition of 
reverence for that sacred day ! They felt that it 
would not be in keeping either with the character of 
the day, or the spirit of the divine Master, to spend 
even a part of it in going to his grave to anoint his 
body. It seems to me that their example should be 
taken as a solemn rebuke to the thousands of Chris- 
tian men and women who visit cemeteries on that 
holy day to decorate the tombs and weep over the 
dust of their dead kindred. 

Have you ever sat down and quietly thought of the 
situation on that memorable Sabbath ? The Prince 
of Life was in the grave. The eternal Word that 
was in the beginning with God, and that was God, 
after a life of thirty-three years in the flesh, was 
numbered with the dead and locked up in a sepul- 
chre of stone. Did ever the earth revolve upon its 
axis with such a strange and priceless treasure in its 
bosom? In that tomb was not only the body of 
our Christ, but our life, our hope of heaven, and 
the keys of death and hell. 

Imagine the world's condition to-day if he were 
still in the grave. If he had not fulfilled his 
promise to rise from the dead, we would not be here 
to honor him with anthems of praise, but to denounce 



270 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 

him as the arch-impostor of our race. We would 
not be here to sing of a glorious immortality, but to 
join the great army of unbelieving sensualists in 
shouting, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow 
we die." 

" While it was yet dark, on the first day of the 
week," Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went 
to the sepulchre to anoint the body of Jesus. How 
dared they go to that tomb? How dared they even 
speak of putting their hands upon that body? Had 
not Pilate, the Roman governor, at the request of 
the priests and elders, sent a band of Roman soldiers 
there to watch it? Were not these soldiers told that 
an attempt would be made to steal it from its burial 
place? Were they not commanded to guard it to 
the last extremity? Did they not know that they 
would forfeit their lives if they permitted any hu- 
man hand to touch it? In view of these facts it 
did seem that the undertaking of these women was 
reckless and foolish. 

But there is nothing that love, and especially a 
woman's love, will not dare to do. There is no 
peril and no suffering that can deter her when her 
heart is set upon ministering to one upon whom her 
highest affection is bestowed. The most heroic 
things in Christian martyrology were done by 
women. If she was first to sin, she was first in 
her devotion to the great remedial scheme by which 



THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 271 

sin can be overcome and destroyed. If there had 
been a lake of fire between Jerusalem and the grave 
of Jesus those women would have attempted to 
cross it. 

They had other barriers to overcome besides the 
Roman guard. They had seen the huge stone 
placed before the door of the sepulchre. They 
knew that their arms were too feeble to remove it. 
Did that deter them? Nay. They moved on as con- 
fident of success as if each possessed the strength of 
a Samson. In physical strength the average woman 
is inferior to the average man, but in courage and 
determination she is not the weaker vessel. When 
the three Hebrew women stood by the cross of the 
dying Christ, where were the men who a few days 
before had scattered palm branches in his path- 
way and shouted hosanna to his name? Where 
were the apostles, the men who had followed him 
for three years and who had received the highest 
office in his kingdom? Alas! they had forsaken 
him and fled, all save one, and he of all men was 
the most womanly in his nature. 

Inspired by faith and love, Mary Magdalene and 
her companion went in the early morning to the 
tomb with the determination to face any difficulty. 
But they found no obstacle, either in the Roman 
guard or in the massive stone before the door. God 
had gone before them. "And behold, there was a 



272 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 

great earthquake : for the angel of the Lord de- 
scended from heaven and came and rolled back the 
stone from the door and sat upon it. His counte- 
nance was like lightning and his raiment white as 
snow : and for fear of him the keepers did shake 
and become as dead men." 

Brethren, I believe that every true believer in the 
" Lord of life and glory " has for his helper in this 
lower world some ministering angel, and wherever 
there is a task too difficult for his own strength that 
ministering angel stands ready to accomplish it for 
him. 

Sometimes questions like these will come into 
our minds : Why did not this great angel who 
rolled the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre 
interpose for the rescue of the innocent Christ? 
Why did he sit quietly in heaven while Jesus was 
in the hands of the mob ? Why did he not come 
down on Calvary and smite his murderers and take 
him from the cross ? In answer to these questions 
it is sufficient to say that the death of Jesus Christ 
was a necessity of God's moral universe. It was 
an indispensable part of the great scheme of re- 
demption "that he, by the grace of God, should 
taste death for every man." It was not until he 
cried, "It is finished," and "bowed his head and 
gave up the ghost," that helmed cherubim and 
sworded seraphim could interfere. Jesus himself 



THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 273 

said that he must needs go up to Jerusalem, and 
suffer many things of the priests and elders, and be 
crucified, and rise again on the third day. 

The appearance of a solitary angel at the sepul- 
chre shows how economical God is in the use of his 
resources. There was a band of brave soldiers to 
be overcome and a great stone to be lifted from the 
entrance to the tomb. How was it done ? Not by 
an army of angels. Only one of that innumerable 
company around the throne of the Almighty was 
sent to perform this task. His appearance was 
sufficient to paralyze with fear the hearts and arms 
of the Roman guard, and his hand alone was suffi- 
cient to break the seal and roll away the stone. 

You remember that when God executed ven- 
geance upon all the people of Egypt it was done by 
a solitary angel. 

When the Israelites were dying from the sting 
of the flying serpent, how did God save them ? By 
simply lifting a brazen serpent above their camp. 

In setting up a kingdom on the earth that should 
outlive and overthrow all other kingdoms, Christ 
did not call a council of great and mighty men and 
invoke their sympathy and aid. He simply com- 
missioned a few Galilean fishermen to go out and 
reiterate the truths which they had received from 
his lips. 

Happy angel must he be who was commissioned 



274 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 

to unseal the tomb and to behold the resurrection of 
the world's Redeemer. How thrilling must be the 
story which we shall, by and by, hear from the lips 
of that angel ! If, as Daniel Webster says, " elo- 
quence is in both the subject and the occasion/' 
what may we expect from that celestial orator when, 
surrounded by the white-robed millions of heaven, 
he stands up to speak of what he felt on that morn- 
ing of the first day of the week, as he stooped down 
and looked into the sepulchre and saw the dead 
Christ revive, lay aside the grave-clothes, and come 
forth ? If there is ever to be silence in heaven, if 
lute and harp and trumpet are ever laid aside for an 
hour, it will be when God's angel tells the story of 
the resurrection of Jesus. Not one of the sacred 
writers attempts any description of the resurrection. 
How could they describe a scene which was wit- 
nessed by no human being and that was too sublime 
to be depicted by any human speech ? 

Christ was crucified publicly, but he rose from 
the dead secretly. No mortal eye beheld him 
coming out of the tomb. Why were not the Sanhe- 
drin and all Jerusalem gathered around the sepul- 
chre to witness his victory ? What an opportunity 
to convert his enemies and to remove the last vestige 
of doubt from every honest mind. Why was not 
his resurrection as public as his crucifixion ? And 
when he had risen from the dead, why did he show 



THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 275 

himself only to his disciples ? Why did he not go 
out to some mountain height and invite all Jerusa- 
lem, Judea, Samaria, Galilee, and the whole world 
to come and see that he had risen from the dead ? 

My only answer is, that God has ordained that, in 
reference to some things, we shall " walk by faith 
and not by sight." In the exercise of his sovereign 
wisdom and will he has made our salvation de- 
pendent on faith. He gives us only such evidence 
as is required to constitute a basis for faith. He 
will give us no more than this. To cultivate faith 
there must not be too much sight. To any man 
who loves the truth, the evidence of Christ's resur- 
rection is sufficient. There were more than five 
hundred witnesses to it. The character of these 
witnesses who saw him again and again after he 
came out of the grave, the pure and self-denying 
lives they led, the sacrifices they made, and the 
sufferings they endured in bearing testimony to the 
resurrection, will remove every rational doubt from 
any mind that has an honest desire to know the 
truth. 

The angel that had terrified the guard spoke 
kindly to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, and 
sent them away to tell the disciples what they had 
seen and heard. Inspired with ecstatic joy, they 
immediately ran back into the city and began to tell 
their marvelous story. What was the effect of it 



276 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 

upon the disciples ? Though Jesus had said, " The 
Son of man must be crucified, and the third day 
rise from the dead," the words of these women were 
to the most of them like an idle tale. Peter and 
John, however, were curious enough to investigate 
the matter. They ran with all their might to the 
sepulchre. When they arrived, seeing that the 
stone had been rolled away, they looked in and 
found nothing but the grave-clothes. The body of 
their Lord was not there. 

Convinced that he had risen, they went back to 
their homes and to their fishing nets. Mary Mag- 
dalene remained and wept before the door of the 
empty grave. Why did she linger there? What 
more did she want ? Peter and John had told her 
that they had looked into the grave and that it was 
vacant. Why did she not return with them ? She 
did not go away, because it was there that she got 
the last glimpse of her beloved Lord. Her heart 
clung to the spot with all the infatuation of an un- 
controllable and deathless affection. See the fond 
mother as the body of her darling child descends 
into the deep, cold grave. See her as she bends 
over, with aching heart, to take a last look at the 
coffin which contains the precious dust. See her 
when the burial is over and the multitude has dis- 
persed. See how she lingers to weep and pray. It 
was with a sorrow deeper and keener than this that 



THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 277 

Mary Magdalene tarried at the spot where she had 
the last sight of her divine Benefactor. 

As she wept she stooped down and looked into 
the sepulchre. What did she see? Kot the empty 
tomb which Peter and John had found, but " two 
angels in white, sitting, one at the head and the 
other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain." 
Oh, what a sight was that ! And what a recompense 
of all her constancy of love. As in the holy of 
holies the cherubim stood over the Ark of the Cov- 
enant, so over the place where the body of Jesus 
had slept these two angels sat face to face. Why 
were they there ? Why was that place so dear to 
them? Why did they look down with interest so 
intense upon the cold gray stone where Jesus had 
slept the sleep of death? Well, it was a matter 
which it behooved them to look into. The Christ 
who had lain there was their God as well as our 
Saviour. In that tomb his gospel had received its 
last confirmation. There he was declared to be "the 
Son of God with power." There he had seized and 
carried away the keys of death and hell. 

As Mary sat there, indulging her bitter grief, the 
angels said, "Woman, w T hy weepest thou?" Her 
reply was, " They have taken away my Lord, and I 
know not where they have laid him." While she 
was thus communing with the angels she heard a 
voice from behind : " Woman, why weepest thou?" 



278 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 

Supposing it to come from the gardener she turned 
around and said to him, "Sir, if thou have borne 
him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him." But 
when she heard that same voice pronounce the word, 
" Mary," she knew it was Jesus, and throwing her- 
self at his feet, she cried, "Master, Master, Master !" 
Addressing her in the same affectionate tone, he said : 
" Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend 
unto my Father and your Father, and to my God 
and your God." 

When Mary Magdalene had delivered this sweet 
and comforting message to the disciples, she and 
"the other Mary" dropped out of view. They ap- 
pear no more in the sacred record. But I am per- 
suaded that, in the great company of the redeemed 
in heaven, there are none who stand closer to the 
glorified Christ than these two women. 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ insures the resus- 
citation of all the dead. " Christ is risen from the 
dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept." 
" If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even 
so them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
him." Nothing less than this glorious assurance 
could comfort us in the loss of our loved ones. 

The ancient pagans sorrowed without hope. A 
shattered pillar, a ship gone to pieces, a harp broken 
and tuneless, and a flower-bud crushed, were the sad 
emblems of their hopeless grief. But when we look 



THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 279 

upon the mounds beneath which sleep the ashes of 
our dead, faith sees them sown with the seeds of im- 
mortality. Deathless flowers shall spring up there, 
and where we sowed with sorrow ^\e shall reap 
with joy. 

We died in the first Adam, but we shall live in 
the second Adam. We sink with the earthy, but 
we shall rise with the heavenly. The resurrection 
of Christ is God's pledge and proof of our own 
resurrection. He rose representatively, and as a 
specimen of renovated humanity, and we rise in the 
regular process of moral causation. " This corrup- 
tion must put on incorruption, and this mortal put 
on immortality." " Then shall be brought to pass 
the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up 
in victory." 

Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of 
a future more glorious than that which awaits the 
people of God? The "Elysian Fields" of Virgil, 
Homer's " sparkling rills of nectar," and the " Par- 
adise " of Milton, with its perennial flowers and its 
eternal harps and hymns, are unattractive and re- 
pulsive in comparison with what this earth shall be 
when death and the grave have given up their prey 
and the tabernacle of God has descended to abide 
with men. 

Then let our joy to-day be unconfined. Let sor- 
row cease and gladness rule the hour. Let our re- 



280 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 

deemed spirits rise on wings of faith and love and 
join the songsters of the skies. 

Awake, thou wintry earth, 

Fling off thy sadness ; 
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth 

Your ancient gladness. 

Wave woods ! Ye blossoms all ! 

Grim death is dead ! 
Ye weeping funeral trees, 

Lift up your head. 

For " Christ is risen, and become the firstfruits of 
them that slept." 



XX 

POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 



" We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling- 
block, and unto the Greeks foolishness ; but unto them 
which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power 
of God, and the wisdom of God." 1 Cor. 1 : 23, 24. 

It was not so much the Christ as Christ crucified 
that offended the Jews and Greeks. The Jews 
looked for a Messiah, and their dearest hopes were 
centered upon his mission ; but a Messiah who 
would submit to arrest, insult, and scourging, and 
who would allow himself to be crucified between 
two thieves, they would not have. The Greeks 
would not have objected to a Messiah if he had 
come as a great statesman, warrior, and philosopher ; 
but to call a peasant Jew, who had expired like 
other criminals on a Roman cross, the Messiah, was 
an insult to their pride and intelligence. 

This despised doctrine was the one great theme 
of Paul's preaching. It was the very heart and 
soul of the faith for which he contended and suf- 
fered so heroically and died so gloriously. 

The opposition of those ancient Jews and Greeks 

281 



282 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 

to this feature of the gospel has been reproduced 
in every subsequent generation ; but it has survived 
every assault, and to-day is the banner of a host 
which defies the world and the very gates of hell. 

Recently one Mr. Buchanan, an English in- 
fidel, wrote a dolorous epitaph for the gravestone 
of the Christian religion. Other men have done 
the same thing in every age since Jesus on the cross 
bowed his head and gave up the ghost. David 
Hume's favorite exclamation was, "Christianity is 
dead ! " Voltaire said that in fifty years there 
would scarcely be a trace of the religion of Jesus 
left in the world. But here it is before us to-day. 
If it is a corpse, as Mr. Buchanan declares it to 
be, it is a marvelously animated one. If we are 
in the midst of its funeral obsequies, there is an 
unaccountable jubilation in the ceremony. The 
procession is moving with a quicker step than was 
ever seen at any other funeral. The music is very 
unlike a requiem. 

Joy to the world, the Lord is come. 

All hail the power of Jesus' name. 

Children of the heavenly king, 
As ye journey sweetly sing. 

Jesus, I love thy charming name ; 

'Tis music to mine ear ; 
Fain would I sound it out so loud, 

That earth and heaven might hear. 



POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 283 

These are strange songs for the world to be sing- 
ing if Christianity is ready to be buried and epi- 
taphed. 

" We preach Christ crucified." Paul put the 
emphasis on crucified, because he knew that the 
saving power of the gospel was in the fact of the 
crucifixion. " I determined not to know anything 
among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified." 
"God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross 
of our Lord Jesus Christ." 

He could have preached about the purity, gentle- 
ness, compassion, courage, and manliness of Jesus, 
but he knew that in such a discussion of him there 
was no power to convict, transform, and save. He 
knew that a man might believe anything that was 
true of the life and character of Christ, but if he 
omitted the fact that Christ was crucified, and that 
his death was a propitiation for the sins of the 
world, he would be untouched by the redeeming 
power of the gospel. 

Paul did not undervalue any feature of our 
Lord's character, nor any saying of his lips, nor 
any act that he performed ; but when he would 
show lost men the way of salvation, he saw nothing 
but the gory cross, the dying Lamb, and the cleans- 
ing blood. In fixing his mind and heart upon the 
death of the sacred victim, in giving it a sublime 
pre-eminence, in putting it into the very center of 



284 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 

God's great scheme of recovering mercy, he was in 
perfect harmony with the teachings of the divine 
author of the gospel. 

Jesus, when unfolding the way of salvation to 
Nicodemus, said : " As Moses lifted up the serpent 
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be 
lifted up." Only a week before his crucifixion he 
said, " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
draw all men unto me " ; and the evangelist de- 
clares that Jesus said this to signify "what death 
he should die." 

" The Son of man must be lifted up." The lift- 
ing up was an absolute necessity. It was in God's 
eternal plan of redemption, and if Jesus Christ had 
not been lifted up on the cross, not a human being 
could be saved. It was not essential to the scheme 
that Christ should preach a definite number of ser- 
mons and perform a definite number of miracles, 
but it was essential that he, "the just, should die 
for the unjust." Of this necessity he was pro- 
foundly conscious. He said to his disciples that he 
must go up to Jerusalem and be crucified and rise 
from the dead. 

It was a terrible ordeal which he foresaw, and 
the night before his death the thought of it brought 
out a bloody sweat upon his brow, and constrained 
him to pray, " Father, if it be possible, let this cup 
pass from me." But as it was not possible for sal- 



POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 285 

vation to be accomplished without it, and loving a 
guilty world better than himself, he bowed himself 
to the earth and said, " Nevertheless, not my will 
but thine be done." 

It is this lifting up of the Son of Man, his igno- 
minious death on the cross, which renders the gos- 
pel we preach " foolishness " to some and a "stum- 
bling-block" to others. They cannot see why a 
God of infinite resources should adopt such a 
scheme for redeeming the world. I suppose that 
the bitten and dying Israelites had about the same 
thought concerning the brazen serpent that was 
lifted up over their camp. "The Lord said unto 
Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon 
a pole : and it shall come to pass, that every one 
that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live." 

That was a strange device to save people from 
the effects of a deadly poison in their veins. A 
strange thing to set before the eyes of men already 
filled with consternation and horror ! The image of 
a serpent would serve only to remind them of their 
desperate condition, and to aggravate, rather than 
mitigate, their terrible sufferings. 

Strange sermon it must have been that Moses 
preached to those wailing and despairing Israelites. 
"Ho, Israel! Look yonder! See lifted on that 
pole a picture of the loathsome, horrible creature 
which has bitten you, and injected into your blood 



286 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 

its deadly venom ! Look at that forked tongue 
darted into the air ! See those keen fangs ! Look 
at that head thrust out, ready to make the fatal 
dart ! Look ! Look ! Look, and live ! " 

Strange sermon ! Does it not sound like a mock- 
ery of the woes of the sick and dying people to 
whom it was delivered ? And yet it was nothing 
less than a message from the living God. It was 
the revelation of God's remedy for their terrible 
scourge. Those who believed and obeyed the di- 
vine proclamation were instantly healed. 

When they turned their dying eyes upon the pole 
in the midst of the camp they saw the serpent, but 
there was no anger in its eye, there was no venom 
on its lips, there was no fury in its tongue, and 
there was no enmity in its twisted form. To the 
eye of the believer, that image was transformed 
into an object that was radiant with divine love and 
mercy. Looking upon it, he felt at once the heal- 
ing power of a good and gracious God. 

The brazen serpent, lifted up above the bitten 
and perishing Israelites, was a type of Jesus Christ, 
who many centuries afterward was lifted up on Cal- 
vary. He was lifted up for the redemption of a 
guilty and lost world. He was lifted up that " who- 
soever believeth on him should not perish, but have 
eternal life." If the lifting up of the serpent was 
a strange device, this is infinitely stranger. 



POWER OP A DESPISED DOCTRINE 287 

How are guilty and wrath-deserving men to be 
saved ? By looking at an object far more revolting 
and harrowing to human sensibility than a brazen 
serpent. They are saved by fixing the eye of faith 
on a cross, a huge gibbet, dripping with human 
blood, and upon which hangs a man charged with 
crime, a supposed conspirator, mocked, derided, and 
hooted out of the world. 

Paul stood in the midst of Jews and Greeks and 
said, " That despised being, who hung upon that 
instrument of shame and torture, is the world's only 
hope. He is the only being in all the universe who 
can pardon your sins and save your guilty souls. 
Whosoever believeth on him shall not perish, but 
have everlasting life." 

In every subsequent age men commissioned of 
God have gone through the world with the same 
message. Eighteen centuries have passed since 
Paul fell asleep, but I can stand here to-day and 
face men with the same confidence and boldness in 
declaring that the despised Nazarene, who was cru- 
cified between two thieves, and who was deemed 
less worthy of life than Barabbas, is man's only 
Redeemer, and " that he is able also to save them to 
the uttermost that come unto God by him." We, 
the living ministry of the nineteenth century, are 
commissioned to say to men covered with the lep- 
rosy of sin, and sinking down into the darkness and 



288 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 

woes of the second death, " Lift up your heads and 
look at him who hangs on yonder cross, and ye shall 
be healed and saved." 

No other view of him will bring salvation. It 
is important that you view him in every event of his 
earthly history and in every act of his mediatorial 
career. See him as a babe in the manger, when 
that new star appears and rolls up the eastern sky 
and shines immediately over his birthplace. See 
him in the temple at the age of twelve years, a 
prodigy of earnestness, asking questions of the doc- 
tors of the law. See him descending into the Jor- 
dan to be baptized of John. See him as he comes 
up " straightway out of the water," while the Holy 
Spirit in the form of a dove rests upon him, and a 
voice from the " excellent glory" exclaims, "This 
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 
See him on the mountain speaking a wisdom sur- 
passing all that the world had ever heard, words 
which inspired men to say, " Never man spake like 
this man." See him feeding the multitudes with a 
few loaves and fishes. See him healing the lepers, 
opening the eyes of the blind, treading the mad 
waves of Galilee, quelling the storm, and raising 
the dead. See him in the splendor of his trans- 
figuration, enrobed in blinding beauty, his coun- 
tenance shining as the sun, and his whole being 
luminous with the glory of the highest heaven. 



POWER OP A DESPISED DOCTRINE 289 

But you will never know his saving power and 
feel his divine life communicated to your secret 
soul until you see him crucified. You will never 
know the joy of salvation until you see him lifted 
up to the malice of earth, the fury of hell, and the 
wrath of heaven. It is only in such a vision of 
him that you see your own sins in all of their hid- 
eous vileness. Beholding him there, as the victim 
of your iniquity, you see your guilt not only con- 
demned, but forgiven and obliterated forever. 

That in which we who are called and whose 
spiritual eyes have been opened, see the wisdom 
of God and the power of God unto salvation, is 
and ever will be, to the Jew spirit, " a stumbling- 
block," and to the Greek spirit, " foolishness." 

Infidels may call the preaching of salvation by 
the crucifixion of Christ u foolishness," but they 
dare not say that those who believe in it are fools. 
They dare not say that such men as Lord Bacon, 
Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, Sir William Hamil- 
ton, William E. Gladstone, George Washington, 
Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee are fools. 
It is a significant fact that millions of living men, 
who once joined the haughty Greeks in pronoun- 
cing Christ crucified foolishness, now see in it the 
saving wisdom and power of God. How do you 
account for the conversion of such men ? Do you 
say there was some unaccountable paralysis of their 



290 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 

intellectual powers which rendered them capable of 
believing an absurdity ? The facts warrant no such 
conclusion. 

How do you account for the fact that the nations 
whose civilization is shaped by this doctrine are pre- 
eminent in intellectual culture and power? How 
do you account for the fact that the nations which 
have sunk into weakness, ignorance, and stupidity 
are those that reject this doctrine, and that the na- 
tions which receive it as the wisdom of the living 
God have developed into magnificent prosperity and 
strength ? 

A Chicago newspaper, which is the organ of 
American barkeepers, gamblers, and adulterers, con- 
tains the following editorial paragraph : 

"Churches, whose preaching and worship have 
become a chestnut, cannot reasonably hope to com- 
pete with Sunday baseball, Sunday picnics, Sunday 
theatres, and Sunday saloons." 

I am ready to admit that the church in which 
" Christ and him crucified is preached," does not 
attract as many people as the Sunday baseball, or 
the Sunday theatre, or the Sunday saloon. But I 
ask the Chicago editor who gives vent to his fiend- 
ish delight over this ignominious fact, to compare 
the effects of the Sunday baseball, the Sunday the- 
atre, and the Sunday saloon upon human character 
and social order, purity, and peace with those of the 



POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 291 

gospel of the crucified Christ. I suppose that such 
a comparison would open the eyes of such as he even 
to the truth that Christ is a better friend to hu- 
manity than Belial. 

No, the gospel does not draw so many as these 
Sunday iniquities which are so dear to the Chicago 
editor ; but, thank God, those whom it does attract it 
draws in a different direction. It draws them from 
darkness into light, from bondage into freedom, 
from uncleanness into purity, from the grossest ani- 
malhood into the noblest manhood, from the agony 
of fear into the joy of hope, from confusion and un- 
rest into order and peace, from self to God, and 
from earth to heaven. 

The Sunday saloon, the Sunday baseball, and the 
Sunday theatre are the deviPs incubators which are 
hatching out the numerous villainies that curse the 
countries in which they are tolerated. They are the 
devil's training-schools, in which young men and 
young women are fitted for a life of degradation and 
infamy. 

Christ crucified is the magnet which has lifted 
into purity and strength the men and women who 
have put into the world's civilization all that gives 
to it brightness, beauty, and permanence. It is the 
divine force that has established the colossal pillars 
that support the whole fabric of refined and virtu- 
ous social life. 



292 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 

The preaching of the doctrine of Christ crucified 
has generated the agencies and influences which have 
thrown open prison doors, unfettered slaves, and 
given to many of the nations of the earth civil and 
religious freedom. In this despised doctrine is the 
power which is destined to smite every form of in- 
fidelity and skepticism with a deadly paralysis, and 
that will, sooner or later, make this corrupt and 
apostate world as pure and beautiful as it was when 
God looked out from the heavens and pronounced 
it good. 

"We preach Christ crucified." Why? Because 
it is the only doctrine that can save a soul from 
death. I am sometimes told by one man to preach 
the justice of God, and by another to preach the 
love of God. I do preach divine justice and di- 
vine love ; but you may believe in both and never 
be saved. You must believe in and rest upon that 
exhibition of God's love and justice which is seen 
in the sacrificial death of God's beloved Son. 

It would have availed the poor Israelites nothing 
if they had looked to Moses or to God himself and 
refused to look at the provision which divine love 
and mercy had made for their healing. They re- 
covered from their deadly malady only when they 
turned their eyes upon the brazen serpent which 
Moses lifted up in the wilderness. 

Look not to God in the flowers ; look not to Gocl 



POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 293 

in the stars ; look not to God in rainbows and sun- 
set halos. Seeing him there will bring no redemp- 
tion to your guilty souls. Look to God on Cal- 
vary' s gory summit ; look to God in the person of 
the man, Christ Jesus, who bare your sins in his 
own body upon yonder cross, and by whose cleans- 
ing blood you may be made as pure as the whitest 
seraph that sings in the heavenly choir. 

Look ! Look ! Look ! Oh, there is life in a 
look at the crucified One ! Look ! Look ! And . 
presently you will feel the touch of a power that 
will send a vibration of joy to the deepest sources 
of your being. Look ! Look ! And presently 
there will be a flash of glory from that crown of 
thorns that will turn your darkness into day. 
Look ! Look ! And presently, beyond that cross, 
you will see a golden gateway opening into a world 
of cherubim. Look ! Look ! And presently 
within that temple of beauty you will see an 
archangel writing your name in the book of ever- 
lasting life. 



XXI 
SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 



" Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
free. They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and 
were never in bondage to any man : how sayest thou, Ye 
shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of 
sin." John 8 : 32-34. 

Our Lord was speaking of spiritual bondage 
and freedom when he said, " The truth shall make 
you free " ; but the Jews were too carnalized to 
perceive his meaning. They supposed that his 
words had reference to political bondage, and they 
quickly resented the insinuation that they were 
then, or ever had been, politically enslaved. They 
said, " We are Abraham's children, and were never 
in bondage to any man." They were blind to the 
facts of their temporal condition and history. 

Had they forgotten Egypt, and the four hundred 
years in which they groaned under the yoke of 
Egyptian taskmasters ? Had they forgotten Baby- 
lon, where they were carried captive, and the sev- 
enty years in which they hung their harps on the 

294 



SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 295 

willows and prayed God to restore them to their 
native land? What was their condition at the very 
time at which they boastfully declared that they 
were never in bondage to any man? Had they 
forgotten Caesar and Pilate and Herod ? Were they 
oblivious of Roman eagles looking down upon them 
from towered heights? Were they deaf to the sound 
of Roman bugles, and to the tramp of Roman le- 
gions along their highways? To whom did they pay 
tribute ? Who was their royal master ? A son of 
David ? or an alien, a stranger, an intruder, and a 
pagan ? 

Jesus recognized the reality of moral slavery 
throughout the whole world of mankind, and offers 
his gospel to men as the only means by which they 
could secure moral emancipation. But the average 
man resents the idea that he is morally enslaved, 
and those whose bondage is the most abject and de- 
plorable are the most boastful of their freedom. In 
this " land of the free and home of the brave," 
where every man claims to be " lord and monarch 
of himself," we find the extremest types of moral 
servitude and debasement. 

Far be it from me to undervalue political free- 
dom. I believe that not only the humanity-loving 
millions of earth, but the angels and glorified spirits 
of heaven rejoice, when any people rid themselves 
of the galling yoke of political despotism. 



296 SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 

When all Greece had assembled to behold the 
Isthmian games, a crier stood up in the center of 
the vast multitude and read the following decree : 

" The Senate and people of Rome, and Titus, their 
general, do give liberty and immunity to all the 
cities of Greece that were under the jurisdiction 
of Philip." This proclamation was received with 
shouts and hosannas that shook the solid earth and 
made the welkin ring. The historian says, " The 
birds, flying in the air above the scene, were so 
affected by the acclamations of the rejoicing multi- 
tude, that they fell dead to the ground." 

Freedom ! How that glorious word warms our 
blood and quickens our pulse. 

Go ring the bells and fire the guns, 

And fling the starry banner out ; 
Shout, freedom ! till your lisping ones 

Give back their cradle shout. 

Better to dwell in freedom's hall, 
With a cold, damp floor, and moulding wall, 
Than bow the head and bend the knee 
In the proudest palace of slaverie. 

Alas ! Millions echo these sentiments who are 
slaves in a sense they know not of. Millions who 
would open their veins and pour a libation of their 
blood on the altar of civil freedom, are in abject 
bondage to their own depraved appetites and pas- 
sions. Loaded with chains of corruption, and led 



SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 297 

captive by the devil at his will, they yet boast of 
their freedom, and tell us that they were " never in 
bondage to any man." 

If I should go to the palace of yonder million- 
aire, who is clothed in purple and fares sumptuously 
every day, and before whom a sycophantic world is 
ever bowing to the dust, he would spurn me from 
his presence if I should intimate that he was sub- 
ject to any bondage. But notwithstanding he is so 
proud and boastful, I know him to be the meanest 
of slaves. His whole mind and moral being are 
utterly servile to an evil passion, a corrupt purpose, 
and a tyrannical habit. 

Take another illustration. Take Eobert G. In- 
gersoll, whose free-thinking has carried him to the 
point not only of rejecting revealed religion, but of 
denouncing it as the source of the world's greatest 
evils. With an air of contempt for our weakness 
he tells us that he has verified the proposition of our 
text as to the emancipating power of truth. He as- 
serts that by the exercise of his own reason he has 
satisfied himself that any belief in a divine revela- 
tion is a delusion, that what we call a revelation 
from God is an imposition on human ignorance and 
credulity, that the New Testament account of the 
miracles of Christ is a fabrication of lies, that the 
judgment to come and heaven and hell are the cre- 
ations of priestcraft, and that human immortality is 



298 SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 

a superstition which should not be dignified with a 
serious thought. He declares that he is supremely 
proud of his own freedom from the fetters of all of 
these mischievous delusions. All this has Mr. In- 
gersoll said, and a thousand things besides, too pro- 
fane and irreverent to be repeated in this presence. 
Alas ! His infidelity has done more than eman- 
cipate him from the fear of God, judgment, and 
eternity. It has freed him from the fear of doing 
wrong, and from all reverence for virtue, rectitude, 
and honor. He stands before this nation to-day as 
the apologist and defender of vice and crime. He 
glories in the privilege of using the witchery of his 
eloquent speech in defending and promoting princi- 
ples and practices, the prevalence of which would 
utterly destroy social purity, order, and happiness. 

The primal function of truth is to reveal to men 
their moral condition. It is only in the light of di- 
vine truth that they discover the degradation and 
bondage into which sin has brought them. But as 
this discovery is only the beginning of moral eman- 
cipation, how vast and difficult is the work to be 
accomplished by gospel truth ! We live and move 
and have our being in a world of slaves. Who 
can number the prison doors to be opened, the bars 
of brass to be cut asunder, and the bands of steel 
to be broken ? 

If the gospel of Jesus Christ is the divinely ap- 



SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 299 

pointed instrument for the deliverance of the en- 
slaved millions of our race, what friend of human- 
ity can refrain from saying, "O Lord God, merci- 
ful and gracious, send forth the light of thy truth 
into all the world." 

There is a slavery of misconception and delusion, 
from which men are freed only by the light of the 
gospel. There was a period of my childhood when 
I lived in constant dread of an imaginary monster 
which my Negro nurse had named " Raw-Head-and 
Bloody-Bones." To me that imaginary monster 
seemed to be a reality. One night I saw him, as I 
looked up the stairway into the garret. Under this 
bondage I lived, a nervous, gloomy, unhappy 
child, until my Christian mother told me that there 
was no such creature as " Raw-Head-and-Bloody- 
Bones," and that what I had seen as I looked up 
into the garret, was something which the servant 
had put there to frighten me. 

The untutored savage is in bondage to fear when 
he witnesses an eclipse of the sun. Give him the 
scientific explanation of this phenomenon, enlighten 
him with scientific truth, and he will be freed from 
the pangs of fear. The superstitious Negro flees 
from the marsh-lamp's fitful flame, believing it to 
be the ghost of his grandmother. Reveal to his 
mind the natural causes which produce that flame, 
and it will be no longer to him an object of terror. 



300 SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 

Papal Rome sways her scepter over millions of 
human beings who are kept in bondage to priest- 
craft by the delusion that to their spiritual masters 
are committed the keys of heaven and hell. Set 
before their minds the gospel truth that there is but 
"one mediator between God and men, the man 
Christ Jesus," and that "he openeth and no man 
shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth," and 
they will break away from their bondage into the 
liberty of the true sons of God. 

When John Knox began the Reformation in 
Glasgow, the Romanists of that city believed that 
if a heretic should touch the bell in the great tower, 
he would instantly fall dead to the ground. John 
Knox told them that if they would lower the bell 
into the street, he would not only touch it, but smite 
it. They accepted his challenge, believing that they 
would thus easily dispose of an arch-heretic. They 
removed the bell from the tower to the street, and 
Knox, in the presence of a vast crowd, approached 
it, smote it again and again, pronouncing at every 
stroke his anathema upon the pope and the priests. 
By this peculiar device Knox freed the people of 
that city from a pernicious delusion, and prepared 
them to receive the truth which made them forever 
a community of Protestants. 

Truth is essential to salvation. Men must have 
right conceptions of God. Belief in an imper- 



SPIEITUAL FREEDOM 301 

sonal, pantheistic deity, will not lift the sinful soul 
out of its degradation and bondage. Men who be- 
lieve that God is fitly represented by that pagan 
image in the British Museum, which has twelve 
hands, and in each hand an instrument of torture, 
will never abhor vice and love virtue. Not until a 
man sees the personality, fatherhood, holiness, love, 
and mercy of God, revealed in the person of the 
man Christ Jesus, can he have any desire to obey 
and honor God. 

But the truth of God, to be effective, must be 
applied to the heart and conscience by the Holy 
Spirit. The truth is the sword, and the Spirit is 
the power that wields it. 

Jesus Christ said, " If I be lifted up, I will draw 
all men unto me." He means not literally every 
man in the world, but men of every class and con- 
dition. The lifting up of Christ is our work ; the 
drawing is the work of God's Spirit. Both are in- 
dispensable. If Christ is not lifted up by the 
preaching of the gospel to lost men, the Holy Spirit 
will not draw them, and without his drawing power 
the lifting up will be in vain. We cannot over-es- 
timate the quiekening, subduing, and transforming 
power of gospel truth, when it is applied to the con- 
science by the Holy Spirit. 

When I look about me in this depraved world, I 
see some types of moral servitude which men call 



302 SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 

hopeless. I see the miser hugging his gold with an 
affection that is absolutely blind and stupid. At 
midnight, when good men sleep, and light-winged 
dreams ascend to God and heaven, he sits bending 
over his heap of glittering dust, wrapped in rags and 
from vigilance and fasting worn to skin and bones. 

I see the drunkard. On his bloated face all the 
hideous heraldry of vice is stamped. Unmoved by 
the tears of his wife and the cries of his beggared 
babes, he goes on from debauch to debauch, from 
madness to madness, until he would barter the 
blood in his veins for one more drink. 

I see the harlot, lost to virtue and dead to shame, 
defying alike the scorn of men and the frown of 
God. In the frenzy of her sin and woe, she curses 
her natal day, curses the mother who gave her 
birth, curses the dumb earth beneath her feet, and 
the gentle stars that shine above her head. 

I see the felon whose feet have slipped in human 
gore, and on whose face the darkest histories are 
written. To-morrow he will ascend the scaffold 
and die a felon's death; and yet there is no tear in 
his eye, nor contrition in his heart. 

Do you tell me that for such there is no re- 
demption? If you do, you limit the power of 
God's truth and need a better faith. The annals 
of our blessed Christianity contain the names of 
misers, drunkards, harlots, thieves, and murderers, 



SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 303 

who, under the influence of the glorious gospel of 
the Son of God, became new creatures, attained to 
great purity and beauty of character, and went 
down to their graves with words of triumph. 

My friend, what is your condition to-day? Are 
your fetters gone? Are you free? 

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, 
And all are slaves beside. 

"If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, 
ye shall be free indeed/' In the light of God's 
truth, have you seen and felt your guilt and folly, 
and with true penitence of heart lifted your eyes to 
him who said, "Look unto me, and be ye saved all 
the ends of the earth"? Do you grasp with appro- 
priating faith, the blessed truth that "the blood of 
Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin"? 
Is there a principle of life within you which impels 
you in the path of obedience to God, and that em- 
powers you to say, " Get thee behind me, Satan " ? 

With confidence and joy do you look forward to 
the day when death shall be swallowed up in vic- 
tory, and when you shall be caught up in the air to 
meet your glorified Lord and Redeemer? If to these 
questions you can answer yea, I pronounce you free. 
You know the truth, and the truth has made you 
free. You are in God's keeping, and the gates of 
hell shall not prevail against you. 



XXII 
DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 



" Deliver us from evil." Luke 11 : 4. 

The existence of evil in this world is a problem 
with which no philosophy has successfully grappled. 
It stands before us a wall of darkness on which 
there falls not one beam of light. In their unsuc- 
cessful efforts to explain the mystery some men have 
reached the conclusion that the universe is godless. 
Others have become misanthropic and abandoned 
themselves to a career of dissipation and self-de- 
struction. 

Why God permitted evil to come into the world 
is a secret which he holds in the infinite depths of 
his own bosom. Neither in his written revelation 
nor in the volume of nature has he given the faint- 
est clue to this mystery. 

While it is an insoluble mystery it is a tremen- 
dous reality. We cannot ignore it. It stands out 
distinctly before us in a thousand different forms. 
All of our material senses take cognizance of it. It 
is in our flesh and blood and bone and brain. The 

304 



DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 305 

earth is full of it. Wasted lands, blight and fam- 
ine, plague and earthquake, angry seas and sink- 
ing ships, burning cities and bloody battlefields, are 
objects too real and appalling to be ignored. 

In the Bible we have the record of the entrance 
of evil into the world, an epitomized history of its 
progress through a period of four thousand years, 
and prophecies of its future career up to the time 
when the great globe itself and all that it inherits 
shall dissolve and pass away. Every page of secu- 
lar history is stained with crime and blotted with 
blood. There we see how tyrants' feet have slipped 
in human gore, and how the best and noblest of our 
race have suffered the many ills to which flesh is 
heir. 

All about us to-day are faces lettered with sorrow 
and stamped with shame. Nothing but the fear of 
the iron fist of law keeps a large element of the 
very best of communities from riot and sedition. 
The existence of three or four hundred dens of vice 
in the city in which I speak is enough to convince 
us that devils still tabernacle in human flesh and 
that much of this world's territory is under Satanic 
dominion. 

Our daily newspapers are chronicles of current 
evil. Their chief business is to tell us how nations 
defraud nations, how politicians victimize each other 
by unrighteous trickery, how huge business monopo- 



306 DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 

lies enslave the toiling masses, how lust clamors 
for unrestrained freedom, how bank vaults and 
State treasuries are depleted by embezzlement, how 
drunken husbands murder their wives, how women 
despise motherhood, and how by assassination gov- 
ernments are deprived of their executive heads. 

Stranger than the existence of these evils is the 
fact that so many men live in comparative uncon- 
sciousness of them. Immersed in sensuality, or in- 
sane with the greed of gain, or bewitched by siren 
songs of splendor and pleasure, they seem not to rec- 
ognize the fact that they are out on an ocean of 
merciless whirlpools. They seem not to know that 
they are tenants of a world where every pathway 
leads to peril, where every human habitation is 
shadowed by sorrow, where all beauty is fading 
into darkness, and all life is sinking into dust. 
Not until men awake to a sense of these awful re- 
alities can they comprehend and appreciate the tre- 
mendous significance of the prayer, " Deliver us 
from evil." 

In discussing this subject, my first endeavor will 
be to help you to recognize the dread reality which 
God calls " evil," and the awful disasters with 
which it threatens us, both in this life and in the 
vaster life to come. 

I prefer the Revised version, which reads : " De- 
liver us from the evil one." Our danger is from 



DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 307 

something more formidable and fearful than evil. 
It is from the evil one, a mighty and malignant per- 
sonality who stands behind all that men call evil. 
In the absence of this personality nothing would be 
evil, everything would be good. 

Whenever I touch upon the doctrine of the per- 
sonality of the devil, some objector is heard from 
who seems never to have thought of the subject in 
the light of divine revelation. They seem to be 
utterly forgetful that they have ever read that Jesus 
was tempted of the devil on the mountain, and that 
he said to Peter, " Get thee behind me, Satan," and 
that the inspired writers always speak of the devil 
as a person. 

Who is this evil one ? He is the enemy, for that 
is the meaning of the word Satan. He is the 
tempter who deceives, seduces, and entraps the 
human soul. He is the accuser who brands, black- 
ens, and blasts men with the very sins into which 
he leads them. He is the Apollyon, the destroyer 
who scorches men with his envenomed breath and 
pierces them through with his deadly darts. 

Young man, the invisible enemy that drags you 
every night into a gambler's den is no myth. A 
hundred times, perhaps, you have resolved that you 
would never enter that den again ; but something 
mightier than your own will gets into you and com- 
pels you to go. 



308 DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 

Go to that young bank cashier, once the idol of a 
fashionable social circle, but now an incarcerated 
felon, loaded with infamy and despised by the people 
who helped to destroy him, and he will tell you that 
some malign spirit entered into him, dethroned his 
will, and constrained him to do what his own judg- 
ment and conscience condemned. 

Forty years ago there was a little girl in south- 
ern Alabama whose beauty and loveliness were al- 
most angelic. If I had wanted to paint a picture 
of human innocence I could not have found a better 
model. She was the child of wealthy, cultured, 
and distinguished parents. She was reared in an 
atmosphere of Christian piety. The influences 
which surrounded her childhood, girlhood, and 
young womanhood were exceptionally pure and 
helpful. Twelve years ago she was sentenced by 
an English court to lifelong imprisonment for the 
crime of taking the life of her own husband. Ask 
her to account for the commission of that horrible 
deed, and she will tell you that some invisible fiend 
took possession of her, deprived her of self-control, 
and forced her to the fatal step. 

Young man, the evil one has not yet dragged you 
into a criminal life. No court has sentenced you to 
wear a convict's garb and sleep in a felon's cell ; 
and yet your life may be one of real subjection to 
Satanic power. If you are habitually untruthful, 



DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 309 

or dishonest, or intemperate, or licentious, you are 
the devil's captive ; you are doing his unrighteous 
bidding ; you are completely in his power ; and you 
are in imminent danger of becoming as degraded 
and vicious as the men whom public justice has 
branded with felony. 

Young woman, your record so far may be unsul- 
lied by any disgraceful act. In the eyes of men you 
may be as pure as the white flowers with which you 
are wont to adorn yourself; and yet the evil one 
may at this moment possess your mind and heart. 
If your master passion is the love of social distinc- 
tion and the fleeting pleasures of the gay and giddy 
throng, if the novel has more charms for you than 
the word of God, and the festive hall is more at- 
tractive to your soul than the sanctuary of prayer, 
then may you well pray to be delivered from the 
evil one, for his power is over you. 

If there is one before me to-day in whose breast 
avarice or malice or the lust of worldly power and 
fame is the reigning passion, I hesitate not to say to 
him : " You are Satan's fettered slave ; you are 
in danger of incurable degradation in this life and 
of remediless wretchedness in the endless life be- 
yond the tomb." 

I rejoice that I am divinely commissioned to stand 
here to-day and declare that God's infinite mercy 
has provided deliverance for every one who will 



310 DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 

penitently and gratefully accept it. What that de- 
liverance is and how to secure it are questions which 
demand immediate and most thoughtful considera- 
tion. 

The old Epicureans made evil identical with dis- 
comfort and the avoidance of personal pain the chief 
end of life. Their only idea of deliverance from 
evil was escape, as far as possible, from every pain- 
ful or unpleasant experience. Their theory was 
utterly false. The man who attempts to hide from 
or go around disagreeable things does not escape 
them. It is painful to resist temptation, but sub- 
mission to it will bring experiences still more pain- 
ful. It troubles you to discipline your disobedient 
child, but the neglect of discipline will bring upon 
you more serious troubles. 

The theory of the Stoics was, that pain is no evil 
and that happiness is no good. No relief is found 
in this doctrine, for the simple reason that no man 
of sound mind can believe it. When I have tooth- 
ache, not even an angel from heaven could convince 
me that the anguish of such an affliction is not evil. 
When I am peaceful and happy, it is impossible to 
convince me that it is not good to be in such a state. 

The Christian Science theory is, that evil is a 
myth. The apostles of it would tell you that any 
one who believes in it can step into a fire and re- 
main there for an indefinite period without any sen- 



DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 311 

sation of pain. If the Christian Scientists of Nash- 
ville will furnish a man who will undertake such a 
demonstration of the utility of their religion, I will 
invite this entire congregation to witness the exhi- 
bition; and if it should prove successful, I will ex- 
hort each one of you to become a Christian Scien- 
tist. Until such a demonstration is made, I shall 
continue to affirm that only people of unsound 
minds can be persuaded to subscribe to such a creed. 

Christianity is free from all such absurdities. It 
recognizes the reality of evil and utters no word of 
protest against those natural emotions which are ex- 
cited by contact with it. When from the brow of 
Olivet Christ looked down upon Jerusalem and 
foresaw its destruction, he wept. If he had been 
a Christian Scientist, he would not have wept. To 
him the suffering and slaughter of half a million 
human beings was evil — a stupendous evil — and he 
could not contemplate it without the deepest emo- 
tions of sorrow. He believed, and he taught, that 
death was an evil. Hence we see him weeping at 
the grave of his Bethany friend. He pitied the 
sick, the poor, and persecuted, because he believed 
sickness, poverty, and persecution to be evils. He 
denounced lying, hypocrisy, theft, adultery, and des- 
potism, because he knew them to be evils. 

How does Christ deliver us from evil ? Not by 
removing evil from the world in which we live. 



312 DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 

He has nowhere promised to remove it. Until the 
end of time there will be disease, famine, strife, 
war, persecution, tribulation, and anguish. 

Christians are as liable to all these forms of evil 
as infidels. Moody is just as liable to be caught in 
a railroad wreck as Robert Ingersoll. A ship 
freighted with Christian missionaries is just as much 
exposed to ocean storms as one carrying a band of 
merciless pirates. " Evils, in their external forms, 
happen alike to the good and the bad, to the wise 
and the foolish." Christ does not deliver us from 
evil by removing us from contact with it, but by 
uniting us to himself by a living faith, by letting 
his life into our life, and thereby raising us above 
the dominion and power of the evil one. Deliv- 
ered from Satanic power nothing that is evil can 
overcome us or prevent us from being peaceful and 
happy. 

To the wicked and godless man persecution is 
unmitigated evil. There is nothing in him to mol- 
lify the anguish of it; but when the Christian is 
" persecuted for righteousness' sake," he can rejoice 
and be exceeding glad. The joy which comes to 
him from his union with Christ, and from the con- 
sciousness of Christ's supporting grace, more than 
compensates him for the wrongs which he endures. 

Physical sickness, to the ungodly man, is unmit- 
igated evil. Conscious that he deserves it and with- 



DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 313 

out faith in a divine Helper, he has not one drop of 
comfort. To the child of God physical sickness is 
a " light affliction." It is light because of the re- 
lief which comes to him from the consciousness of 
God's presence, and from the belief that his suffer- 
ing is a divine discipline that will work out for him 
" a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 
Look at Byron. He was young, beautiful, and 
famous. As a poet he had gifts which lifted him 
above every other poet of his time. 

He seemed to stoop to touch the loftiest thought, 
Stood on the Alps ; stood on the Apennines ; 
And with the thunder talked as friend to friend. 
He laid his hand upon " the ocean's mane," 
And played familiar with bis hoary locks. 

But never was there a life more wicked and 
wretched than his. His years were all winter, his 
rest all labor, and his sleep all nightmare. At the 
age of thirty-three he wrote these plaintive lines, 
expressive of his own experience : 

My days are in the yellow leaf; 

The flowers and fruits of love are gone ; 
The worm, the canker, and the grief, 

Are mine alone. 

The fire that on my bosom preys, 

Is lone as some volcanic isle. 
No torch is kindled at its blaze — 

A funeral pile. 



314 DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 

Verily, " there is no peace to the wicked." Why ? 
Because they are under the power of the evil one, 
whose mission it is to disturb them, to make their 
evils doubly evil, and to instill into their every cup 
of pleasure drops of anguish. 

Contrast their condition with that of the Lord's 
people, who are continually saying, " The lines have 
fallen unto me in pleasant places, yea, I have a 
goodly heritage." "What shall I render unto the 
Lord for all his benefits toward me?" "Bless the 
Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless 
his holy name." "Goodness and mercy shall follow 
me all the days of my life ; and I will dwell in the 
house of the Lord forever." 

Every day we hear of suicides committed in 
prisons. Under the burden of disgrace w T hich such 
bondage imposes upon them, men feel that life is 
not worth living and, rather than endure the ills 
they have, they fly to others they know not of. 

The man who is delivered from the power of the 
evil one can never be provoked to take his own life. 
Paul and Silas were publicly whipped and then 
thrust into a Roman prison ; but the cowardly 
thought of suicide had no place in their heroic 
minds. The faith that was in them transmuted 
their humiliation into glory, and their anguish 
into rapture. The presence of their living Lord 
illumined the darkness of their dungeon, and 



DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 315 

turned their mourning into joy. Verity, they were 
delivered from evil. Their lives were hid with 
Christ in God, and Satan had no more dominion 
over them. 

Look at Francis Xavier, in the midst of all the 
degradation, squalid wretchedness, and crime of the 
darkest region of India. See him there in the 
deepest poverty, and without access to a solitary 
human friend. Was he despondent ? No. Did 
he murmur at his hard fate ? No. At the point 
of his greatest extremity he wrote to his friends 
that his joy in the Lord was almost unbearable. 
Christ had so delivered him from the evil one that 
no adversity could disturb the sweet serenity of his 
exalted spirit. 

Poverty is not an evil in itself. The best be- 
ing that ever honored the earth with his footsteps 
was so poor that he had not w T here to lay his head. 
The winding sheet in which his dead body was 
wrapped, and the grave in which it was buried, 
were the gifts of charity. He chose poverty as a 
condition more desirable than wealth. 

Martin Luther did not regard poverty as an evil 
per se. When about to die, he exclaimed : " I 
thank thee, O God, that thou hast made me a beg- 
gar on the earth." 

Poverty is an evil only when it is connected with 
sin and unbelief. When a man is not only poor 



316 DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 

but profane, wicked, unclean, and faithless, he is 
wretched indeed. The most joyless and pitiable 
being in all the world is a drunken, licentious, 
filthy-mouthed infidel pauper. What is true of 
poverty is equally true of every other earthly trial. 
No experience can be evil to us, if we are free from 
the evil one and are living by faith in the Son of 
God. 

To have Christ in us, the hope of glory, is to 
have a source of serenity and joy that will not fail 
us in any of the exigencies that are possible to mor- 
tals here below. 

Thou bounteous Giver of all good, 

Thou art, of all thy gifts, 

Thyself the crown. 

Give what thou wilt, 

Without thee w T e are poor, 

But with thee rich, 

Take what thou wilt away. 



MAY 12 1899 



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